California
Why California is keeping this unusual solar plant running when both Trump and Biden wanted it closed
The electricity it makes is expensive, its technology has been superseded, and it’s incinerating thousands of birds mid-flight each year.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.
Mirrors await the sun on opening day at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Ivanpah Valley near the California/Nevada border February 13, 2014.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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)
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)
“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.
Orange County’s top prosecutor said Amazon has agreed to stop California sales of certain e-bikes that can go faster than state speed limits following a series of fatal collisions.
The announcement, first reported by KCRA, comes on the heels of an April consumer alert by California Attorney General Rob Bonta that highlighted a rise in deaths related to e-bike and motorcycle crashes.
“We are seeing a surge of safety incidents on our sidewalks, parks, and streets,” Bonta said in a statement. “To ride a motorcycle or moped, you need to have the appropriate driver’s license and comply with rules of the road.”
Bonta’s alert stated that pedal-assisted e-bikes cannot exceed 28 mph. Throttle-assisted e-bikes are limited to 20 mph.
Amazon had continued to sell e-bikes with speeds over 40 mph. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Electric bikes and motorcycles have become increasingly popular in the last few years, particularly among teens. But the surge has been shadowed by a spate of deadly crashes.
Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer has charged at least three parents with allowing their children to ride electric motorcycles illegally, calling the vehicles a “loaded weapon.”
Spitzer noted in a post on X that Amazon said it removed e-bikes advertised with speeds over 40 miles per hour after KCRA contacted the company.
“The company said it has removed the examples provided and is investigating compliance for similar products,” Spitzer wrote.
That includes an Orange County mother, who faces an involuntary manslaughter charge after her son allegedly struck an 81-year-old man with an electric motorcycle. The 14-year-old boy had been doing wheelies on an e-motorcycle
A 13-year-old boy on an e-bike in Garden Grove died earlier this week after veering into the center median and hurtling onto the roadway. The boy was traveling at around 35 mph on a black E Ride Pro electric motorcycle, authorities said.
Amazon’s new sales limits come as the Los Angeles City Council pushes to keep electric bikes of off most city recreational trails, arguing they are a threat to hikers. E-bikes would still be allowed on designated bikeways, such as along the L.A. River.
Daniel Felix, 10, looks out from atop a gargantuan stump of an old-growth redwood on his tribe’s ancestral land. Once, this forest on California’s North Coast was replete with the ancient behemoths that can live beyond 2,000 years.
Only a fraction are left now, depleted by a logging company before the state acquired the forest in the 1940s.
This is unique public land, Jackson Demonstration State Forest, spanning 50,000 acres. Trees are plentiful here, but they might not live a millennium. California’s 14 demonstration forests are required to produce and sell timber to show — or “demonstrate” — sustainable practices. Money from logging — roughly $8.5 million a year — pays for management of the forests by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
Daniel’s tribe, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, has pushed to rein in the cutting — spearheaded by his late great-grandmother, Priscilla Hunter. They’re part of a diverse coalition that includes environmental activists, local politicians and other tribes.
Now they may finally get their wish. Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa) has introduced a bill that would nix the forests’ logging mandate, instead prioritizing values such as carbon storage, wildfire resilience and biodiversity.
The bill represents the latest chapter in a region legendary for fierce battles over logging, and it marks an uncommon alliance between tribes and the environmental movement.
Under Assembly Bill 2494, there could still be logging, but it would have to support those new principles, and the forests would be funded differently.
And it proposes another significant change. It would pave the way for giving tribes a say in managing the lands for the first time since they were forcibly evicted more than a century ago, and for integrating Indigenous knowledge — like cultural burning — into the forests.
“It’s what we dreamed of,” said Polly Girvin, Hunter’s former partner and a retired lawyer focused on Native American issues. “And to have it come true? I’m used to movements that sometimes take 30 years in Indian Country to get to the justice you’re seeking.”
Kids play in the stump of an ancient redwood during a potluck held after the spirit run in Jackson Demonstration State Forest last month.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Some backers say the bill offers a new economic path forward for communities behind the so-called redwood curtain. With the decline of logging and cannabis, they see tourism driven by ultramarathons, mushroom foraging and other outdoor activities as a financial savior.
“If we had an increase of 10% of visitors coming to our county because of recreational opportunities, that would more than surpass all of the timber tax in our county,” Mendocino County Supervisor Ted Williams said, projecting an increase in money from a lodging tax.
But the push to reshape forest management is fiercely opposed by loggers and mill owners, who say their work is sustainable and provides blue-collar jobs in a region where they’ve dwindled. Already California imports most of its wood from Oregon, Washington and Canada.
“California has the most rules and regulations of anywhere in the world so all they’re doing is exporting the environmental impact to somewhere else, still using the product,” said Myles Anderson, owner of a logging company in Fort Bragg founded by his grandfather. “It’s pretty disgusting, really.”
Anderson believes the bill will greatly reduce logging, even stop it altogether. In his office, with photos of him and his father at a logging site decades ago, he points out it’s sponsored by the Environmental Protection Information Center. Why else would they and other environmental groups “support it if they didn’t see the same thing that I’m seeing?”
Last month, activists who have sought to rein in logging at Jackson held their first major gathering in about four years, galvanized by the bill that they see as a significant step in the right direction.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
A new but old fight
About five years ago, community members caught wind of plans to chop down towering redwoods within Jackson, near the coastal town of Caspar. Priscilla Hunter would come out to the forest “and could hear them crying — it was our ancestors,” said her daughter Melinda Hunter, the tribe’s vice chairwoman. “Then she had to protect [the trees].”
Environmental activists and Native Americans, not historically allies in the region, joined forces to fight it. “Forest defenders” camped out high in the canopy and blocked logging equipment with their bodies. Some were arrested.
The uprising harked back to the 1980s and 1990s, when iconic environmentalist Judi Bari led Earth First! campaigns against logging in the region. Many of the old tree sitters — white-haired and brimming with stories of Bari — have come out of the woodwork for the latest battle.
For them, it was a win. Cal Fire paused new timber sales and, citing public safety, halted some that were underway — including one expected to generate millions of dollars for Myles Anderson’s logging company.
“We were left with nothing,” Anderson said.
Then, last year, Cal Fire approved the first harvest plan since that hiatus. It riled up the sizable, ecologically minded community.
Jessica Curl, 47, remembers growing up nearby “in a terrain of trunks” as trucks carried out logs. Now the redwoods are regrowing, “gorgeous” and gobbling carbon, she said.
“We’re so lucky to live in an area where we have this amazing climate-change mitigation tool, that if we would just leave it alone would do this amazing work that we’re trying to think of all these cool, inventive things to do.”
Isidro Chavez receives burning sage, or smudging, after a run in Jackson Demonstration State Forest. Smudging is a ritual used to cleanse spaces and individuals of negative energy, promote calm and improve mood.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
Tears of grief, resolve
A group of “spirit runners” — a Native American tradition of bringing prayer — sprinted through the heart of Jackson forest as rain poured through the canopy. The mid-April event marked activists’ first major gathering since protests wound down in 2022.
Attendees gathered in a circle to wait for them. Misty Cook, of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, read a statement as eyes misted all around:
“All the living things around us, they miss us. They miss the language. They miss our touch, our hands, touching all of the things — the water, the plants. They miss the songs. They miss the beat of our footsteps and our voices, and they miss the children’s laughter and play, which was so important. They want us to gather them, to use them and to share them. Otherwise they will get sick and possibly die.”
Cal Fire launched a tribal advisory council to bring Indigenous perspective into Jackson. But some local tribes say it’s not enough because they lack decision-making power.
When the runners arrived, the circle absorbed them. Then they continued on to the site of a controversial proposed harvest, Camp Eight. They wrapped a bandana that belonged to Priscilla Hunter around a small tree — a quiet, somber act where she took her last stand. Runners took turns embracing the trunk.
Redwoods at the Capitol
In March, Rogers’ bill cleared a committee and is now in the Assembly Appropriations Committee’s suspense file. A hearing is set for Thursday.
Funding is a major point of contention. Environmentalists say funding these forests with timber operations incentivizes cutting bigger trees. Cal Fire maintains decisions are driven by forest health, not industry demand.
AB 2494 would fund the forests through a tax on lumber and engineered wood products. The shift could create “[o]ngoing state costs and cost pressures of an unknown but potentially significant amount, possibly in the low millions of dollars annually,” according to a legislative analysis.
The California Forestry Assn., a timber industry trade group, says the idea is a nonstarter.
Cal Fire declined to comment on pending legislation but Kevin Conway, the agency’s staff chief for resource protection and improvement, said its nearly 80-year history managing Jackson reflects “care and attention.” Since the state acquired the forest, “we have more trees on the landscape, more habitat and those trees are trending larger,” he said.
For the tribes who have rallied and prayed, a burning question is whether the land will again reflect their vision, or remain shaped by decisions made by others.
Buffie Campbell, executive director of the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council — co-founded by Priscilla Hunter and one of the groups supporting the bill — said young people wouldn’t be able to fathom the significance of the legislation passing. Maybe that’s a good thing.
“Maybe they don’t need to know about all the fighting that we have to do before they get to go out and enjoy and be tribal guardians stewarding their land.”
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) — Two Republican candidates seeking California’s top office were back on the campaign trail and made a stop in Bakersfield on Saturday.
The California Young Republicans and Kern County Young Republicans co-hosted a forum featuring Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton. The event follows two gubernatorial debates last month in which both candidates appeared alongside several Democrats.
The forum happened on Saturday afternoon at the Liberty Center on California Ave.
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The forum came as mail voting is underway ahead of California’s June 2 primary, where the top two vote-getters will advance to the November general election regardless of party.
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