Energy
PetroChina purchased a 20 percent stake in a Canadian shale gas project, strengthening China’s presence in North America’s energy markets, according to Reuters.

The United Kingdom is considering new nuclear reactors that would use radioactive waste to provide enough electricity for 500 years, the Guardian reported. The reactors would help dispose of Britain’s cache of plutonium and depleted uranium.

The United States plans to auction and issue leases for offshore wind farms by the end of 2012, Bloomberg News reported.

Climate
Police in Chile arrested a man for allegedly stealing five tonnes of ice from one of the world’s fastest shrinking glaciers, according to the Guardian.

Astronomers discovered a new planet 4.5 times as massive as Earth with a climate suitable for liquid water and life, UPI reported.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Image courtesy Great Lakes Commission

The three separation alternatives include a down-river single barrier, a mid-system alternative of four barriers on CAWS branches between Lockport Lock and Lake Michigan; and a near-lake alternative of up to five barriers closest to the lakeshore.

Watershed separation in Chicago is the only permanent solution to stopping harmful aquatic invaders like Asian carp from entering the Great lakes, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Great Lakes Commission (GLC) and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

The report outlines three scenarios, ranging in price from $US 3.26 billion to $US 9.54 billion, which would place physical barriers within the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS) to reverse the flow of the Chicago River and separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed. The plans would require significant infrastructure changes to accommodate shipping, wastewater and flood waters.

These changes would be implemented in two phases, with the first completed by 2022 and the second by 2029. If successful, the project could save $US 1.4 billion to $US 9.5 billion in invasive species control and damage costs, as well as protect the estimated $US 7 billion sport-fishing industry in the Great Lakes. Supporters of the idea say it will also modernize Chicago’s shipping facilities, as well as improve water quality and flood protection.

Asian carp, which devastate aquatic food chains by eating huge amounts of plankton, have infested numerous tributaries of the Mississippi River, including the Illinois River, and are threatening to get into Lake Michigan through a shipping canal near Chicago.

“The millions we are spending every year to stop Asian carp is simply not sustainable,” Joel Brammeier, President and CEO of Alliance for the Great Lakes, told Circle of Blue. “We have the opportunity to solve this permanently.”

Before any construction can start, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must complete its own study, due in 2015, on separating the two water basins, Brammeier said.

“We hope this is a wake-up call to get the federal agencies and Congress to move faster,” he added. “The biggest hurdle is that the federal side is not moving as fast as the states and cities.”

Five Great Lakes states are suing the Corps of Engineers in federal court in an attempt to speed up the government study.

“The earliest that separation could happen would be 10 years from now but would most likely mean 17 years or even longer,” Mark Biel, chairman of UnLock Our Jobs and executive director of the Chemical Industry Council of Illinois, said in a statement responding to the GLC study.

UnLock Our Jobs represents citizens, businesses and industries that want to keep the CAWS open for shipping while pursuing other means to stop Asian carp.

“Shutting down this one multi-billion dollar transportation route does not even address the 18 other waterways in and out of the Great Lakes that could serve as entry points for invasive species,” Biel said.

According to UnLock Our Jobs, separating the CAWS from the Great Lakes would harm shipping through the locks, which account for $1.9 billion in economic activity and more than 17,000 jobs in the region.

To accommodate shipping and transportation, the separation barriers proposed by the GLC study would include recreational boat lifts and intermodal transfer facilities for cargo.

Brammeier said that preserving the status quo is not an option. “The shipping industry has this idea that if you just ignore it, it will go away,” he said. “That mindset misses the reality that eight Great Lakes states and millions of individuals are understanding that you can’t operate one waterway in a manner that puts an entire region at risk.”

Sources: Great Lakes Commission; Ports of Indiana

China
Two provinces in China are testing a new pilot water project that aims to financially reward upriver provinces if they ensure quality river water for their downstream neighbors, Xinhua reported.

China will invest in agriculture innovation in an effort to increase food production and ensure long-term supplies, Reuters reported, citing the Chinese State Council’s first policy document of the year.

Just for fun, here are pictures from China’s Harbin Ice Festival.

Water-energy-climate
Tighter regulation, booming natural gas production and decreasing costs for renewable energy technology herald the end of America’s coal era, according to The Economist. But can demand from Asia stoke the industry?

The Earth’s land and ocean surfaces continue to experience higher temperatures than several decades ago, according to NASA’s annual analysis of global temperatures, Guardian reported.

Sustainability
The European Commission has invited the public to share views on how Europe can produce and consume more sustainably.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

A Texas town became the first in the state this year to truck in drinking water after wells ran dry due to the ongoing drought, according to the Associated Press.

Africa
Trade constraints and climate change are making food insecurity worse in Africa, according to AlertNet.

Saltwater intrusion is forcing rice farmers in Tanzania to look elsewhere for land and freshwater, causing some to destroy protected mangroves, AlertNet reported.

Europe
The European Union should plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030, according to a proposal from the Danish EU presidency, EurActiv reported.

A new international information system from the World Meteorological Organization will help exchange climate, weather and water data more efficiently, according to Xinhua.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

In December, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) approved a 300-megawatt (MW) solar energy project on public land in southwestern Arizona on condition that the developer changes the plant’s design from concentrated solar thermal collectors — which use mirrors and fluids to generate steam to run a turbine — to photovoltaic (PV) panels.

The PV technology will cut down the plant’s water consumption by almost 99 percent. Instead of pumping 3.7 million cubic meters (977 million gallons) per year from the nearby Rainbow Valley aquifer, the facility will use a mere 40,705 cubic meters (10.7 million gallons), primarily for washing the panels.

Each drop conserved is important in the arid Southwest, where the water from most river basins is fully allocated and where climate models predict an even drier future.

The Sonoran Solar Energy Project, as the facility in southwestern Arizona is known, is among a growing number of solar energy projects across the deserts of the American West to make design changes that use less water. As the federal government pushes solar power production, developers both on public and private lands are increasingly switching from wet cooling to dry cooling — like the proposed Quartzsite Solar Energy Project in Arizona — or swapping mirrors for PV panels, which are getting cheaper each year.

Government Targets, Public Pressure, Market Forces
The solar boom in the United States was kick-started by a provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which required the DOI to approve 10,000 MW of non-hydroelectric renewable energy projects by 2015. Then in 2009, the Obama administration called for rapid development of solar and wind power on public lands, and set a target of getting 25 percent of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

Yet in the midst of this development, concerned citizens have pushed regulators to consider solar technologies that save water. During the permitting process for the Sonoran project, the DOI requested less water-intensive PV panels after several residents in the area worried that water withdrawals for solar power generation would draw down the shallow aquifer that the community is using for drinking water.

“Given feedback from stakeholders, the decision is one that we support,” said Steve Stengel, a press officer for NextEra Energy Resources, the parent company of the Sonoran project developer.

Though the DOI generally does not have jurisdiction over water rights, it does assess the total environmental consequences of resource use. As part of the evaluation process, the department can require an alternate technology if a project is estimated to use too much water.

“There haven’t been [federal] regulatory changes,” said Arreola. “But we have seen changes in the developers.”

Those changes, Arreola told Circle of Blue, are being driven by industry economics. The falling price of PV panels has in recent years prompted more and more developers to choose this technology instead of the more established solar thermal systems. According to GTM Research, the price of silicon panels fell by half in 2011, to $0.90 per watt, and will drop even more.

The downward price pressure caused Solar Trust of America, which is developing the world’s largest solar project — a 1,000 MW facility in the Mojave Desert near Blythe, Calif. — to alter its plans.

In August, Solar Trust decided to switch the Blythe plant from a solar thermal design with parabolic troughs to PV panels. The company is “deploying the right technology at the right time,” Uwe Schmidt, the chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

The trend is evident across the U.S. solar industry. According to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group, some 82 percent of projects under development plan to use PV technology. By contrast, just 61 percent of projects already in operation do so.

The fall in solar panel prices comes as a group of U.S. manufacturers have accused the Chinese government of unfairly subsidizing the Chinese solar industry and flooding the American market with artificially cheap goods. The U.S. Commerce Department is investigating whether tariffs should be imposed on solar panel imports from China.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of the Interior is conducting a broad environmental review of solar development on public lands in six western states. The review aims to amend the department’s resource management plans so that solar projects are directed to the most suitable parcels of land.

Water concerns, among other issues, have already prompted the DOI to cut the number of proposed “solar energy zones” from 24 to 17. Officials from Lincoln County, Nev., for instance, have requested that only PV technology be allowed in a neighboring zone because of worries about groundwater withdrawals. The DOI eventually withdrew the land from consideration.

Until the environmental review is complete, all public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are open for solar development. In the last two years, no less than 16 solar projects have been approved for BLM land.

Solar development on private lands can also result in a net gain in water if it displaces irrigated agriculture, as has happened in many western states.

Australia is building a $100 million water pipeline to supply four coal seam gas to liquefied natural gas plants, according to ABC.

The Atlantic highlights some of the U.S. cities most likely to suffer from future drought conditions.

Elizabeth Economy asks whether China’s potentially game-changing water reforms can take root and blossom.

The world is running out of time to ensure sufficient food, water and energy to its rapidly growing population, a new U.N. report has warned. By 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water.

Why is Chesapeake Energy drawing down some of its shale gas operations after selling numerous pieces of its vast shale gas holdings to the world’s largest energy companies?

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Dry weather and pollution are plaguing some of the major lakes in China, Africa, South and North America at the start of the year, posing threats to regional water supplies, fishing, transportation and natural ecosystems.

Drought
A prolonged drought in southeastern China has almost desiccated Poyang Lake, the country’s biggest freshwater lake, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Jiangxi provincial hydrographic bureau. The lack of rainfall in regions upstream of the lake, where precipitation in 2011 was 21 percent lower than average, has reduced the flow of the five rivers that feed into Poyang. Earlier this year, the Ganjiang River fell to record low 12.35 meters (40.5 feet). To make matters worse, a slew of new construction projects could be filling in parts of Poyang Lake during the low-water season.

Changing rain patterns are also steadily draining Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest lake by area and a source of the Nile River. Ports along the lake’s shores are struggling to accommodate the large shipping vessels that transport people and cargo between African communities. Some quays have lost as much as 5 meters (16.4 feet) of anchorage depth, and increasingly erratic rainfall linked to climate change will likely make the problem worse.

Mild Winter
In North America, high temperatures and a lack of snow and ice could push the Great Lakes water levels down. The region experienced near record rainfall in 2011, but by December temperatures were higher than average, threatening to offset the gains, according a six-month forecast released in December by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Though lake levels are currently much higher than last year, they will likely drop 5 to 18 centimeters (2 to 7 inches) below 2011 levels by summer if the mild weather continues.

Lake Mead, which straddles the Arizona-Nevada border, is also suffering from a lackluster winter. The region saw virtually no snowfall in January, prompting forecasters to scale back their water supply predictions by 3 billion cubic meters (792.5 billion gallons) — enough to meet current demand levels in the Las Vegas Valley for a decade. While last year’s record snow bolstered the lake, dry winters could force valley communities — which get 90 percent of their water from the Colorado River via Lake Mead — to seek out other sources.

Pollution
Meanwhile, rapid urbanization in El Alto, Bolivia, is threatening Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake. The booming city, which has grown 4 percent a year for the past two decades, is dumping raw sewage, garbage and industrial waste into the rivers that feed Lake Titicaca, posing challenges to fishermen and farmers trying to water their livestock, the Guardian reported. The lake also receives treated wastewater from the El Alto’s severely overtaxed treatment plant.

Sources: AlertNet, China.org, The Detroit News, Guardian, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Xinhua

The European Union has adequate legislation on shale gas exploration, according to a study commissioned by the EU regulatory arm, Bloomberg reported.

Water Pollution
India has some of the world’s most toxic air and water, according to an international study presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has leaked more than 600 liters of water, but none is thought to have entered the ocean, Reuters reported, citing the plant’s operator.

Climate Change
High temperatures can cause wheat crops to age faster and reduce output, according to a Stanford University-led study that underscores the threat from climate change, Reuters reported.

Singapore is raising its sea defenses against rising sea levels linked to climate change, according to Reuters.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Since halting work on the Yucca Mountain disposal facility, the need for a new strategy is “urgent”, according to the commission, because “this generation has a fundamental ethical obligation to avoid burdening future generations with the entire task of finding a safe permanent solution for managing hazardous nuclear materials they had no part in creating.”

On Wednesday, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hear testimony from the co-chairs about the report. On Thursday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will do the same.

Energy: 2012
The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will also hold a hearing on Tuesday to discuss the year’s energy trends.

La Nina
NASA satellite images show cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific, indicating the peak of the La Nina phenomenon. One NASA scientist said that “this La Niña could deepen the drought in the already parched Southwest.”

Bureau of Reclamation forecasters have done a 180 on projections of surplus water for Lake Mead, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In December, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam was predicted to rise 11 feet this year. Now, it is forecast to fall 13 feet by next January.

The National Water and Climate Center’s water supply outlook for the western U.S. can be found here.

Keystone
During a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing last Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones explained the department’s permitting process and the rationale for rejecting a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Water Reuse
The National Research Council published a report on recycled municipal wastewater and its role as part of the national water supply.

Water Pollution
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a new tool to help the public learn who is dumping chemicals into which bodies of water. Data is available for 2007-2010.

Fracking Study
The EPA has extended to March 12 the deadline for public comments on its draft study of groundwater contamination from natural gas drilling near a Wyoming town. The agency also announced that it will test groundwater in northeastern Pennsylvania as it continues its investigation into claims of water contaminated because of hydraulic fracturing.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

In December, Portland, Ore.-based, Iberdrola Renewables began generating electricity at its 30-MW facility in Alamosa County. The 89-hectare (220-acre) site used to be farmland, but now it holds roughly 110,000 silicon panels.

By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue

SAN LUIS VALLEY, Colorado — Just as in every address that he has made to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama this week confirmed his commitment to the economic and environmental benefits of wind and solar energy, adding that opening more federal land to clean energy development is in the national interest.

“I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes,” the president declared in the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.

But the government’s plan to turn large expanses of the American West into clean energy production zones is confronting considerable challenges, not the least of which is growing public resistance to big wind and solar projects that are popping up on wild lands close to rural communities. The public restiveness — driven by concerns about the effects of utility-scale installations on the environment and on small-town community values — is altering the government’s planning process and putting in doubt just how big the clean energy footprint will be on public lands.

In few places are the outlines of the opposition more clearly defined than here in the San Luis Valley, a high-altitude farming and ranching region that is the size of Connecticut. In this sunny section of Colorado, the Obama administration has designated four parcels — totaling more than 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) and administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — as “solar energy zones.”

“We are not against solar,” rancher Julie Sullivan told Circle of Blue. Last year, Sullivan helped defeat a large project on private land near her Saguache County home. “But we didn’t want a bad solar project, because then the bar would be lower. That would open the door to more bad projects.”

Competitive Edge and Citizen Acceptance
Indeed, as Jesse Morris, a solar analyst at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a renewable energy research and consulting group, explained in an interview with Circle of Blue, the wind and solar business is being influenced by a host of new trends in energy markets and citizen acceptance.

For instance, innovations in drilling technology and production have boosted domestic supplies of natural gas, which produces half the carbon emissions of coal and is selling at such low prices that utilities are planning new gas-fired electrical power stations. According to Morris, with such competitive pricing for electricity produced from natural gas, the economics of clean energy production could shift from big centralized solar installations to individual rooftop solar and smaller distributed systems.

In other words, big solar plants could quickly become obsolete.

“Solar is great, and we need as much of it as we can get to meet current and future energy needs,” Morris said. “The federal focus is on larger facilities. But — looking longer term — those facilities have real issues.”

In the meantime, the four solar energy zones here in the valley are joined by 13 other solar zones in five additional Western states that, three years ago, the federal government designated as prime areas to generate power from the sun. The Interior Department and a number of sister agencies are nearing the end of an environmental review, which began in 2009 and will reach another milestone on Friday, when the public comment period for the supplement to the 11,000-page draft assessment closes.

The final version will be released this summer. It will amend the BLM’s resource management plans to allow the agency to concentrate solar development in the most suitable areas.

Even through a casual reading of the citizen observations made during the first public comment period in early 2011, it becomes clear that the concerns expressed about big solar plants in the San Luis Valley are shared around much of the West. The Department of the Interior heard complaints about the negative effects of solar development on wildlife, on plants and water resources, on the fragmentation of animal migration corridors, on the cultural resources of Indian tribes, and on marred scenic views.

As a result, the department narrowed the number of solar zones to 17 from 24 and tightened the boundaries of others. The total area now prioritized for solar development on BLM-managed lands has been cut by more than half — from 273,972 hectares (677,000 acres) to 115,335 hectares (285,000 acres).

Though the Interior Department kept all four zones that had been proposed for the San Luis Valley, their total acreage was reduced by a fifth.

Sense and Sensitivity
Since 2010, the BLM has approved more than 5,600 megawatts of solar generating capacity, all in the deserts of Arizona, California, and Nevada.

Right now, a company can apply for a solar permit for any BLM land, Joe Vieira told Circle of Blue. He works on renewable energy projects from the agency’s San Luis Valley office in Monte Vista.

On conducting the latest environmental review, Vieira said, “the BLM is trying to be more strategic with where solar could be developed — finding those places with the least conflict over endangered species, views, and cultural and environmental resources.”

Two of the valley’s four zones have applications pending, Vieira said, and new transmission line capacity would be needed for all four solar zones. Because of suggestions made during the public comment period, the boundaries of three of these zones were modified and reduced. If all four zones were fully developed, the draft assessment estimates that they could support 1,450 MW using photovoltaic (PV) panels, or 2,612 MW using solar troughs.

Ceal Smith, of the San Luis Valley Renewable Communities Alliance, which supports small-scale solar development, calls the BLM plan “a giveaway to industry.” This is partly because, unlike gas and mineral leases, federal laws for wind and solar confer no financial benefits to the host community. To correct this, several U.S. senators from Western states have co-sponsored a bill that would create royalty payments for the two renewable sources based on the amount of electricity generated.

“If energy is being produced, the area needs to benefit,” said Christine Canaly, director of the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, a public lands advocacy group. “That mechanism is not in place for the BLM zones.”

Instead of developing thousand-acre tracts of public land, Smith suggested putting solar panels on degraded private land or in the empty corners of fields that are irrigated by the legions of center-pivot systems in the valley. That course of action would minimize land disturbance and help transition marginal fields away from excessive groundwater use that is draining one of the valley’s aquifers and affecting the holders of senior surface rights.

Portland, Oregon-based Iberdrola Renewables, for instance, built a 30-MW photovoltaic array last year on 90 hectares (220 acres) that were once used to grow carrots and potatoes. Whereas the crops would have consumed at least 270,000 cubic meters (220 acre-feet) of water each year, said Richard Sparks, an irrigation agronomist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the solar plant will use almost none — just a small amount for the bathroom and the kitchen in the operation center, according to Iberdrola spokeswoman Jan Johnson.

On the other hand, solar thermal systems, which use much more water, could put additional strain on the valley’s water resources and traditional land patterns. The authors of the draft environmental assessment anticipated potential conflict, writing that “the transfer of agricultural water rights for solar energy development will result in agricultural fields being put out of production and will significantly alter land use in the San Luis Valley.”

Who Benefits?
The San Luis Valley has long supported small solar projects installed on homes and businesses. But, as Julie Sullivan tells Circle of Blue, few residents of the San Luis Valley are anxious to support a “bad” solar project that could “open the door to more bad projects.”

By bad, Sullivan is referring to a utility-scale project that a decade or so ago would have been widely cited in the national environmental community as beneficial. In this case, it was a 200-megawatt facility proposed by Tessera, a Houston-based company. Initial plans called for a fleet of 8,000 solar dishes, each 12-meters tall (40-feet tall) with Stirling engines to convert the sunlight into electricity.

Sullivan points from her dining room window to the horizon, where the Tessera solar dishes would have stood out against the freshly powdered Sangre de Cristo Mountains. This time last year, neighbors representing ranching, agricultural, and environmental groups were meeting in her home to discuss how to stop the project.

“I never thought I’d be fighting solar power,” says Sullivan, who taught environmental studies at Lesley University before marrying into the ranch life. “But it was an industrial project in an agricultural area. The renewable industry wants us to think that anything ‘renewable’ is green, and it’s not.”

Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

In the last few years, four photovoltaic solar installations have been built in Alamosa County near the San Luis Valley electrical substation. Together they have the capacity to produce 87 megawatts.

Last July, the company abandoned the project, citing noise levels that exceeded state limits. Defeating the installation marked something of an opening salvo by opponents in what will be a long-running struggle for residents and the federal government to define what a “good” solar project is and to shape solar development here, in the nation’s highest agricultural region.

A Solar Mini-boom
Another hotspot for solar development in the valley is Alamosa County, to the south of Saguache. Because the valley’s transmission substation is in Alamosa, four projects — 87 MW in total — have been built on private land there, providing financial benefits to the county.

Both Smith and Canaly said that Alamosa County had decided to keep projects relatively small — the largest two are 30-MW facilities on no more than 90 hectares (220 acres). They are popular because they make good use of existing grid space and reap tax benefits, which ultimately help local citizens, said Smith and Canaly.

While solar development on the valley’s public land awaits the conclusions of the Interior Department’s environmental review this summer, private landowners have been leasing or selling land to energy companies. A pair of 100-MW solar thermal plants, each with a 200-meter (656-feet) energy-storage tower, are proposed for 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) in Saguache County.

On February 2, the county’s board of commissioners will hold a public hearing to discuss the latest application from SolarReserve, a Delaware-based company.

This article was prepared while the author, Brett Walton, participated in a fellowship that was paid for by the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources.