The electricity it makes is expensive, its technology has been superseded, and it’s incinerating thousands of birds mid-flight each year. The Trump administration wants to see this unusual power plant closed, and in a rare instance of alignment, the Biden administration did, too.

But the state of California is insisting the Ivanpah power plant in the Mojave Desert stay open for at least 13 more years. It’s an indication of just how much electricity artificial intelligence and data centers are demanding.

Ivanpah’s owners, which include NRG Energy, Google and BrightSource, had agreed with their main customer, Pacific Gas & Electric, to end their contract and largely close Ivanpah. But last month, the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously rejected that agreement, citing concerns about reliability of the grid to deliver electricity. The decision will effectively force two of Ivanpah’s three units to remain running rather than shutting down this year.

PG&E and the federal government had argued that closing would save ratepayers and taxpayers money compared with paying for Ivanpah’s electricity until 2039, when the contract expires. But some experts and stakeholders agreed with the state’s call, noting that the troubled power plant is still providing electricity at a moment when the state has little to spare.

“We’re seeing massive electricity demand, especially from the great need for data centers, and we’re seeing grid reliability issues, so all in all, I think this was a wise move,” said Dan Reicher, a senior scholar at Stanford. “Having said that, I think reasonable people can differ on this one — it’s a closer call.”

Ivanpah was the largest plant of its kind in the world when it opened to great fanfare in 2014. The 386-megawatt facility uses a vast array of about 170,000 mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto towers, creating heat that spins turbines to generate electricity. This is known as solar thermal, because it uses the heat of the sun.

But the plant has been plagued by problems nearly from the start. The mirror-and-tower technology that once seemed so promising was outpaced by flat photovoltaic solar panels, which soon proved cheaper and more efficient and became the industry standard.

Ivanpah has no on-site battery storage, which means it mainly makes power while the sun is shining, and it relies on natural gas to fire up its boilers each morning.

The plant also developed a reputation as a wildlife killer, with a 2016 report from The Times finding about 6,000 birds die each year after colliding with Ivanpah’s 40-story towers — or from instant incineration when they fly into its concentrated beams of sunlight.

Despite these issues, the CPUC determined the facility must stay online to help the state meet “tight electricity conditions” expected in the coming years, including surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence, building and transportation electrification, and hydrogen production. Ivanpah qualifies as clean energy and California has committed to 100% clean energy by 2045.

The state’s most recent Integrated Resources Plan, which looks ahead at how it will meet energy needs, “would dictate that Ivanpah should remain online in light of the current uncertainty regarding reliability,” the CPUC wrote in its December resolution.

The five-member decision came despite PG&E’s assertion ratepayers will save money if it closes, a conclusion generally supported by an independent review.

It also came despite support for Ivanpah’s closure from both the Biden and Trump administrations, which rarely converge on the issue of energy. Construction of the $2.2-billion plant was backed by a $1.6-billion federal loan guarantee that has not yet been fully repaid.

How much remains on that loan has not been made public, but an internal audit reviewed by The Times indicates it may be as much as $780 million.

In the final weeks of his term, Biden’s Department of Energy helped negotiate terminating the contract between PG&E and Ivanpah’s owners. Trump’s Department of Energy — which has been adversarial toward renewables such as wind and solar — urged California to accept that deal.

“Continued operation of the Ivanpah Projects is not in the interest of California or its customers, nor is it in the interest of the United States and its taxpayers,” Gregory Beard, a senior advisor with the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing, wrote in a Nov. 24 letter to the CPUC.

Yet the California agency pointed to Trump’s policies among its reasons for keeping Ivanpah open. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum will increase prices for new energy technologies and could delay the expansion of the nation’s energy grid, the agency said. Trump also ended tax credits for solar, wind and other renewable energy projects in a move that could reduce up to 300 gigawatts of nationwide build-out by 2035, the CPUC said.

In August, Trump’s Interior Department effectively halted wind and solar development on federal land in favor of nuclear, gas and coal. That decision could affect Ivanpah, which sits on nearly 3,500 acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management near the California-Nevada border.

These “shifting federal priorities” are creating uncertainty in the market, the CPUC noted in its resolution. California ratepayers have already paid in excess of $333 million for grid updates to support the Ivanpah project, and terminating its contracts “risks stranding sunk infrastructure costs,” it said.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System concentrated solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert in 2023.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

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Stanford expert Reicher, who also served at the Energy Department under the Clinton administration and as director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google, said from an energy perspective, the decision is sound.

“I lean toward keeping it online, running it well and making improvements, particularly as we face an electricity shortage the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades,” he said.

Reicher noted that while concentrated solar has fallen out of favor in the U.S., it was seen as an attractive investment at the time. Some places are still building concentrated solar facilities, among them China, Mexico and Dubai, and it can have some advantages over photovoltaics, he said. For example, many new concentrated solar facilities have a higher capacity factor, meaning they can generate electricity more hours of the year.

Stakeholders such as Pat Hogan, president of CMB Ivanpah Asset Holdings and an early investor in the plant, also applauded the CPUC decision. While Ivanpah has never operated at its target of 940,000 megawatt-hours of clean energy per year, it is still providing electricity, he said. The plant produced about 726,000 MWh in 2024, the most recent year for which there are data, according to the California Energy Commission.

“It doesn’t operate at the optimum performance that was originally modeled, but it still generates electricity for 120,000 homes in California,” Hogan said.

Hogan said terminating the power purchase agreements would leave investors and taxpayers in the dust, benefiting the utility company and the plant owners. The plan would have converted a “partially performing federal loan into a near-total loss event,” he wrote in a formal complaint filed with the Energy Department’s Office of the Inspector General.

Others said solar photovoltaic and battery storage are the best, most cost-effective way to secure California’s energy future. The state has invested heavily in both, but Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and the CPUC should work to ensure more are brought online quickly, said Sean Gallagher, senior vice president of policy at the Solar Energy Industries Assn., a national trade group.

At the same time, bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., should work to stop the federal solar slowdown, which has placed an estimated 39% of California’s planned new capacity for the next five years in “permitting limbo,” Gallagher said.

“The CPUC’s decision highlights the precarious energy position California is in, with electricity prices and electricity demand rising at historically fast rates,” he said.

But Beard, of the Energy Department, criticized the agency decision as a “continuance of California’s bad policies that drive up energy bills.”

“California’s decision to keep this uneconomic and costly resource open is bad for taxpayers and worse for ratepayers,” Beard said in a statement to The Times.

He declined to say whether the federal government plans to appeal the decision, but said his office “has been working closely with the parties involved to ensure maximum repayment of U.S. taxpayer dollars while driving affordability through customer savings.”

For its part, PG&E said the company is now evaluating next steps.

Thousands of software-controlled heliostats concentrate the sunlight on a boiler mounted on a series of three towers at the Ivanpah power plant in 2014.

(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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“Ending these agreements would have saved customers money compared to the cost of keeping them for the remainder of their terms,” spokesperson Jennifer Robison said in an email.

NRG spokesperson Erik Linden said Ivanpah’s ownership has continued to invest in the facility and “remains steadfast in its commitment to providing reliable renewable energy to the state of California.” The existing power purchase agreements remain in effect and the plant will operate under their terms for the duration of the agreements, he said.

It’s not the first time California has delayed the retirement of a power facility over concerns about system reliability. Last month, the California Coastal Commission struck a landmark deal with PG&E that will extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo until at least 2030. It was originally slated to close last year.

A 500-plus-pound bear living underneath a residence in Southern California has departed the space it called home for months, according to the nonprofit that helped evict the large mammal.

BEAR League announced in a Facebook post on Jan. 8 that it helped remove the bear from Kenneth Johnson’s home after he reached out to the nonprofit. Johnson previously told the Los Angeles Times and KTLA that he found signs of something living under his home as early as April 2025, but he didn’t know what it was for sure until November, when a security camera caught the bear sneaking into a crawl space.

At an estimated weight of 500-plus pounds, the bear “barely fit into the crawlspace and caused extensive damage to the home’s heating ducts,” according to BEAR League. Concerned over a possibly damaged gas line, Johnson shut off his gas service just before Christmas, the nonprofit said.

BEAR League said it stepped in to evict the bear after earlier removal attempts by state wildlife officials were unsuccessful. Two first responders with the nonprofit traveled to Johnson’s home, where one of them crawled beneath the residence — “fully aware the bear was still there” — to get behind the animal and “encourage him to exit through the crawlspace opening,” according to Lake Tahoe-based the nonprofit.

The nonprofit also said it loaned Johnson electric unwelcome mats, which shock bears when they step on them, to give him time to make repairs and secure the crawlspace to prevent future visits.

“If you live in bear country, securing your crawlspace is essential. This time of year, BEAR League evicts multiple bears from under homes every day,” BEAR League said.

Kenneth Johnson creates GoFundMe to help with repairs

At the bottom of BEAR League’s social media post, the nonprofit linked to Johnson’s GoFundMe page, which he created to help cover repair costs.

According to Johnson’s fundraiser page, the 500-plus-pound bear dwelled underneath his home in Altadena for over a month, causing “tens of thousands of dollars in damage.”

“I’m in a situation I never imagined,” Johnson wrote on the fundraising page.

Johnson further explained his current employment situation, saying that right after surviving the Eaton fire in early January 2025, he lost his job, and shortly after that, the “bear began tearing into the structure of (his) home.”

“I have video footage of it twisting gas pipes, which created an extremely dangerous situation and forced me to shut off my utilities just to stay safe,” he continued.

The funds would also go toward making Johnson’s home “safe and livable again,” which includes paying for professional traps. As of Jan. 10, the GoFundMe has raised over $8,000; however, its goal is $13,000.

Jonathan Limehouse covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at JLimehouse@gannett.com.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a record-high $350 billion state budget Friday that makes “historic” investments in areas like education — but kicks the can on paying down federal debt, foisting costs onto struggling employers.

Newsom’s budget incorporates a $43 billion windfall tied to the stock market that he touted in his State of the State speech Thursday, bringing his office’s estimated deficit down to $3 billion — the state’s fourth deficit in a row. The budget plows billions into maintaining education, health care, and other programs but ignores a $20 billion federal loan for Covid unemployment payments — a situation one legislator called “alarming.”

Ignoring the loan means small businesses are on the hook for the state’s debt, said state Sen. Roger Niello of Fair Oaks.

“We already have the highest unemployment in the nation and we’re putting this additional burden on our employers. It makes absolutely no sense,” Niello said.

The budget includes $662.2 million in mandatory interest payments, but there is no money going towards the principal.

Since July, the total balance has ballooned to $21.3 billion, and private employers in California pick up the tab under federal rules. Employers pay an $42 extra per employee this year and growing, per KCRA

Every state expect California has paid off the Covid-era loans.

“That is an alarming thing because [Newsom is] basically saying that businesses and employment are not a priority to him and that’s troubling,” Niello added.

At 5.5%, California’s unemployment rate was the highest in the country as of November.

Newsom’s $350 billion budget proposal is about $30 billion higher than this year’s budget, thanks largely to federal healthcare cuts that forced costs onto the state and mandatory set-asides in areas like education.

At a budget briefing Friday, Newsom’s finance director Joe Stephenshaw highlighted record spending on education— amounting to a record $27,418 per K-12 student, $5.3 billion for the University of California system, $15.4 billion to community colleges, and $1 billion to needy schools — along with $500 million towards local homelessness prevention, $195 million in new public safety spending, $3 billion for the state’s rainy day fund and $4 billion for school reserve funds.

The budget includes some cuts to climate-related spending and housing and homelessness, per Calmatters. And it does not include any direct funding for Prop. 36, the anti-crime measure supported by nearly 70% of voters in 2024 — a move Republicans blasted.

But even with Newsom’s unexpected windfall, analysts expect deficits to grow to as high as $35 billion in the coming years as expenditures outpace even optimistic revenue projections.

Newsom and the state Legislative Analyst create separate budget projections, and the governor’s has historically been far rosier on the revenue side. The legislative analyst projected a $18 billion deficit in the coming fiscal year, while the governor calculated $3 billion.

Under Newsom, the state’s general fund spending has increased by 77% partly owing to new programs spun up when the state was flush with cash, according to Republican legislators.

Newsom’s $350 billion budget — the last before he leaves office next year — does little to confront ballooning expenses, dumping the problem on the future governor and Legislature, according to Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones.

“This is more of the same from a lame-duck governor content on leaving the rest of us to pick up the financial pieces when he leaves office,” Jones said in a statement.  

Democrats in the legislature were more measured in their responses.

“During these times of uncertainty, we must craft a responsible budget that prioritizes the safety and fiscal stability of California families,” said State Senate Leader Monique Limón in a statement.

Newsom and legislators will refine the budget in the coming months towards a final proposal in May.

One major unknown is how California will handle a loss of about $1.4 billion in funding due toTrump administration changes to low-income health care and food programs.

Last year, Newsom was force to scale back a controversial plan to provide Medicaid coverage for illegal immigrants after costs spiked, forcing California was forced to borrow $3.4 billion, Politico reported.

Newsom’s budget didn’t fully explain what would happen to immigrant health care under federal cuts, and Stephenshaw struggled to answer detailed questions from reporters — saying Newsom’s office was still awaiting guidance from the feds.

“As we work through the May revision, this is something we’ll be well aware of and we’ll make those decision at that time,” he said.