Solar plants’ location matters

I am happy to see Nevadans care about the health of the Mojave Desert and our native bees such as the poppy bee. This species deserves all the protection we can give it to maintain the biodiversity of our deserts.

But the deserts face a threat if we ignore energy sprawl across the Mojave Desert, including in Nevada, where large-scale solar developments bulldoze and trample the bearpoppies and other wildflowers that pollinators need.

I have advocated for years to site these projects on brownfields, rooftops and over parking lots with distributed battery storage. We need better incentives for net-metering and not a giveaway of our public lands for more utility-scale solar power plants.

The Gemini Solar Project will destroy 11 square miles of desert full of bees, desert tortoises, kit foxes, burrowing owls that are also used by bighorn sheep. We need a smarter green energy future.