Ivanpah is Another Failure of Woke Renewable Energy Policy
When the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility rose out of the Mojave Desert in 2014, it was heralded as the crown jewel of America’s clean energy future. Politicians, investors, and environmental advocates spoke of it as a revolution in power generation. Billions of dollars in loans and subsidies poured in, and headlines declared a new era had arrived, where renewable energy would displace fossil fuels, stabilize the climate, and keep the lights on at a fair price.
Yeah, and I have oceanfront property in Arizona…
Today, Ivanpah is closing. What was once branded as a beacon of progress has become a hulking reminder of how far rhetoric can stray from reality. The facility, plagued by inefficiency, technical setbacks, and astronomical costs, never lived up to its promises. Instead, it stands as a lesson in the dangers of letting emotional woke politics dictate energy policy.
Subsidies: The Only Lifeline
Ivanpah’s collapse underscores a hard truth: without government handouts, large-scale renewable projects struggle to survive. Built at a cost of $2.2 billion, the project leaned heavily on federal loan guarantees and tax credits to offset risks that private capital would never have shouldered on its own. Even with that help, the plant under-delivered.
Ivanpah produced only about half the electricity it promised in its early years, forcing the owners to request more subsidies to keep the operation afloat. Utility customers in California were left paying higher rates for a source of power that was supposed to be both clean and cost-competitive. Instead of ushering in a cheaper, more reliable grid, Ivanpah proved that the economics of solar thermal power still make absolutely no sense and can’t hold up without a steady infusion of taxpayer money.
The Ivanpah project aligns with most other California initiatives based on promises that ultimately fail, and of course, the taxpayer is left with the bill. This isn’t innovation; it’s dependency. True breakthroughs stand on their own. The personal computer, the smartphone, the internet: take your pick, but they all transformed the world without endless public subsidies. Renewable advocates insist solar and wind are “inevitable,” yet their survival remains tethered to government policy, not market viability.
Reliability Still Out of Reach
Beyond cost, Ivanpah also illustrates renewable energy’s deeper flaw of unreliability. The facility’s design required vast mirrors to reflect sunlight onto central towers, but even in the desert, sunlight isn’t constant. Cloud cover, seasonal shifts, and daily cycles all meant inconsistent power output. Fossil fuel “backup” plants had to step in frequently when solar couldn’t deliver.
Green advocates have long promised that storage technologies would bridge these gaps, but that promise remains unfulfilled. Batteries are expensive, resource-intensive, and nowhere near the scale required to stabilize a modern grid. California already faces rolling blackouts, and the early retirement of plants like Ivanpah only heightens the state’s vulnerability.
Put simply, in energy, reliability is non-negotiable. Families, hospitals, and businesses can’t afford to gamble on whether the sun shines or the wind blows. Until renewables can deliver power as consistently as coal, natural gas, or nuclear, they will remain supplements at best, not replacements.
A Cautionary Tale for the Future
Ivanpah’s downfall is not just a local embarrassment; more importantly, it’s a warning. For too long, policymakers have placed blind faith in renewable energy as the silver bullet to our energy and environmental challenges. They’ve written generous subsidy checks with other people’s money and gambled billions on projects that never delivered what was promised.
Meanwhile, America’s real workhorses, including natural gas plants, nuclear reactors, and even “unfashionable” coal facilities, continue to do the heavy lifting. These energy sources don’t need weather reports to function. They provide steady base-load power that keeps industries humming and households safe.
If we continue down the current path of pouring money into unproven and unreliable technologies to appease woke leftist lunatic environmentalists, we risk not only economic damage but also energy insecurity. Ivanpah should be remembered not as a grand experiment, but as a cautionary tale that good intentions and glowing press releases do not generate electricity. Steel, fuel, and proven engineering do.
The lesson is clear. Renewable energy may have a role to play, but the fantasy that it will replace conventional power on its own terms has been permanently shattered. Without subsidies, it fails. Every-single-time. Without reliability, it endangers us. And without honest accounting of its shortcomings, it will lead us into darkness, literally, figuratively and economically.
