BrightSource Energy’s Environmental Commitment

Environmental stewardship is a core value at BrightSource Energy. Our unwavering commitment to developing clean, renewable power is guided by the principles of sustainable development and the goal of addressing climate change by making solar energy cost competitive with fossil fuels. As pioneers in the solar industry, we understand what it takes to build clean energy projects and protect the earth’s natural legacy. Our commitment does not end with producing clean energy; we constantly look for ways to reduce our environmental impact at all levels of our business and work with stakeholders to share these best practices.

Fast Facts

  • By using air to cool our solar plants instead of water, we are reducing water usage by more than 90 percent.
  • BrightSource Energy’s 2.6 gigawatts of contracts with PG&E and Southern California Edison will avoid more than 2.5 million tons of CO2 annually.
  • BrightSource Energy’s PG&E and Southern California Edison contracts will also displace hundreds of tons of other criteria air pollutants each year, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds.

Environmentally-conscious planning

Our team takes the responsibility of developing California’s first major commercial solar energy project in nearly three decades with the utmost seriousness. We understand the important precedent that the Ivanpah project is setting. For Ivanpah and all of our projects, we carefully take environmental considerations into account in the design, site selection and construction of our solar power plants. For example:

  • Design: Our commitment to the environment includes our decision to use air instead of water to cool our power plants, conserving one of the most precious resources in the desert. By air cooling, our plants reduce water usage by more than 90 percent. We recirculate our water during energy production, and then reuse it to clean our mirrors, wringing the maximum use from every drop of the water we consume. Our technology heats water directly into steam, avoiding use of oil or synthetic heat transfer fluids that can be highly detrimental to the environment. Our technology is also extremely efficient and optimized to capture as much of the solar resource as possible in each location, generating the most energy from the land and resources used to build and operate our plants.
  • Site selection: We select project areas that are near roads and existing transmission lines – places where human activity has already left its mark, such as grazing lands; where there is a reduced need for new transmission lines, and where environmental impacts can be minimized.
  • Construction: Our technology places individual mirrors onto metal poles that are driven into the ground, reducing the need for extensive land grading and using far fewer concrete pads than other technologies.

Environmental coordination with stakeholders

BrightSource carefully considers environmental concerns in our work with many other stakeholders - including governmental agencies, consumers, utilities and environmentalists - to develop the renewable energy policies western states and our nation need to fight climate change, enhance our economy, reduce dependence on foreign fuels, and protect both human health and wildlife. We engage local communities through outreach and work closely with the staff at environmental agencies that review our projects. We strictly adhere to the environmental regulations and guidelines, including the stringent environmental review processes required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act. We have also committed to go beyond legal requirements in protecting the environment, using dry cooling to reduce demands on scarce water resources.

Environmental review process

In August 2007, as the first step in building our Ivanpah facility, BrightSource filed the first large-scale solar construction permit application since 1989. The application was filed after more than a year of planning, data collection and analysis, including collection of environmental data that involved extensive detailed biological surveys and other environmental assessments. The application is currently being reviewed in the first joint process undertaken by the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for solar projects, and BrightSource is proud to be setting a high standard for the industry. We take the environmental review process very seriously, and look forward to incorporating the measures it recommends to minimize any negative environmental impacts from our construction and operation of the Ivanpah plant.

Policy issues

BrightSource Energy, on its own and through participation in the Large-scale Solar Association, the Solar Energy Industry Association and other organizations, is working with many other stakeholders in the development of renewable energy and climate change policy. We are actively involved in California’s Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative, the Western Governors’ Association Western Regional Energy Zone project, and in both federal and state policy proceedings.

In each of these activities, we actively seek to understand and support environmental concerns, working closely with many regulatory agencies, environmental and consumer groups as well as with other renewable companies and energy interests. Our aim is to promote the policies that renewables need to fulfill their promise, allowing them to simultaneously provide substantial reductions in greenhouse gases and other pollutants while delivering reliable energy with significant economic benefits. With the right framework, BrightSource Energy and other renewable energy companies can provide the foundation for the clean energy economy.