Renewable energy great if done right — or is it?

To the editor:

On Thursday, the Review-Journal published an editorial, "Against green," critical of a lawsuit filed by three tribes, the Western Watershed Project and the Center for Biological Diversity that requested the Spring Valley wind project be suspended and sent back to the Bureau of Land Management for further environmental review and public involvement.

The insinuation was that the groups opposed renewable projects more generally and that this was a case of blatant "NIMBYism." Nothing could be further from the truth.

For this project, standard environmental reviews were bypassed, resulting in a shoddy examination of the impacts of the project as well as precluding meaningful public notice and involvement.

And the negative impacts are many. The project intrudes upon a site which saw the massacre of American Indians in the mid-1800s. It impacts the breeding grounds of sage grouse -- a species proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act. It imperils 3 million bats on their migratory travels. It creates an industrial site next to Great Basin National Park.

Moreover, documents obtained by my organization reveal that the BLM ignored concerns from other federal agencies, the Nevada Department of Wildlife and its own experts in rushing approval of the project.

Renewable energy projects done right from the start are indeed a critical necessity for addressing climate change. There are many places in Nevada where wind and solar projects can and should be built. Unfortunately, by ignoring environmental concerns and good process, BLM has hindered rather than helped Nevada's transition to renewable energy.

Rob Mrowka

North Las Vegas

The writer is an ecologist employed by the Center for Biological Diversity as a conservation advocate and covers public lands and environmental issues statewide.

Green folly

To the editor:

Philip Waterman's letter about the cost of achieving clean, renewable energy (Thursday Review-Journal) struck a chord with me. I have just received my NV Energy bill, which included a table showing the sources of the energy they sell to customers. The table shows that nearly 99 percent of our energy comes from coal, natural gas, geothermal and hydroelectric. Solar and wind together provide approximately six-tenths of 1 percent of our power.

According to NV Energy's 2010 Renewable Energy report, they plan to increase solar and wind energy production by a few hundred megawatts over the next few years. But there is no indication of either development cost or cost per megawatt hour to the customer.

That raises some interesting questions. If we assume that solar plus wind energy production doubles over the next five years, that will mean a marginal increase of about six-tenths of 1 percent of our energy will come from solar and wind. But at what net cost? How much will reduced purchases of coal or natural gas offset the costs of that new renewable energy to the consumer? And will development costs be passed through to the consumer along with production cost?

Mr. Waterman properly raises the question of how much clean, renewable energy development is being driven by government subsidies. If there is economic viability in large-scale wind and solar projects, then the private sector would be investing its own money in it. But if wind and solar development is being driven by taxpayer subsidies, that tells us a different story.

Robert R. Kessler

Las Vegas