The Columbia Plateau in eastern Washington supports productive farmland and rangeland as well as native shrub-steppe habitat of which only 40% remains intact. The region also contains some of the most sought after land in the state for utility scale solar energy development, which is an important component of its future energy portfolio that strives to produce 80% of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% carbon-free by 2040.
CBI has been chosen by the Washington State University Energy Program to provide the science and mapping component in support of a voluntary, collaborative effort that brings stakeholders together in order to identify areas of least-conflict between solar energy development and other important ecological, economic, and social values in order to meet the state’s carbon-free energy goals. CBI’s contribution to this process is based on the successful pilot to this approach in the San Joaquin Valley in California. The project will include a new Data Basin gateway, which is a customized site for accessing the science and mapping resources for this project.
See the recent brochure published by Washington State University for more information.
This report presents consensus recommendations from a group of independent scientists1 to the Renewable Energy Action Team (REAT)2 for the California Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP). DRECP is intended to be a Natural Community Conservation Plan (NCCP) under California’s NCCP Act of 2003 and will be the primary vehicle for obtaining authorizations to “take” or harm some state or federally listed Threatened or Endangered species incidental to constructing and managing renewable energy projects. The Act requires NCCP plans to obtain independent scientific input to guide Plan decisions. The DRECP science advisors include experts in desert ecology, wildlife biology, botany, hydrogeology, and other fields pertinent to the conservation of desert species and natural communities.
CBI worked closely with the Department of Land Conservation Development (DLCD) and other project collaborators to carry out an expansive spatial data review and stakeholder engagement process to better understand renewable energy opportunities and constraints in Oregon. It was part of a larger effort called the Oregon Renewable Energy Siting Assessment (ORESA) project, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Economic Adjustment. This larger project included Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) working closely with Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) and Oregon State University’s Institute for Natural Resources (INR).
Data Basin was used to support the spatial data review process resulting in a transparent and accurate spatial data library needed for effective renewable energy planning in the state. Approximately 650 datasets were reviewed with most of them still available on Data Basin. The final Opportunities and Constraints final report was included as part of supporting materials to the larger project.
Wind energy developed in federal ocean waters off California’s coastline is poised to play an important role in diversifying the portfolio of resources that will help California achieve its 100% renewable and zero-carbon energy goals. Since 2016, the state has coordinated with other governmental partners, including the BOEM-California Renewable Energy Intergovernmental Task Force, to identify areas in federal waters off the state’s coast suitable for potential offshore wind energy development. To support this effort, the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) is using data from the California Offshore Wind Energy Gateway to produce a robust set of spatial models, designed to synthesize information to help stakeholders and decision-makers assess the suitability of offshore wind energy development in federal waters off the coast of California. These models, created using the Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS), provide a transparent and data-driven means for assessing a range of considerations at a given location, such as existing energy potential, deployment feasibility, ocean uses, fisheries, and marine life occurrence. Together, these models can be used to inform planning processes for offshore wind energy development to maximize renewable power generation and to avoid or minimize impacts to existing ocean uses and the environment.
The California Offshore Wind Energy Modeling Platform, powered by EEMS Online technology, provides an interface where stakeholders and decision-makers can interact with and explore the models and their data sources to help support decision-making processes.
The project’s technical report, executive summary, and presentation slides are available under “Project Files”, on the right side of this page. A California Energy Commission webinar recording with a project overview can be found here.
Environmental information is often not widely available, including for the solar distributed generation energy sector. Additionally, environmental, engineering, cost, and electrical distribution grid data are typically disparate. This easy-to-use pilot screening tool developed in collaboration with Black & Veatch and funded by the California Energy Commission (CEC) integrates engineering, cost, and environmental information for planning and decision making specifically in Lancaster, California. The key benefits of such a tool include expedited project planning, reduced permitting and interconnection screening, and clearer stakeholder understanding of developable DG potential. The tool is designed to foster proactive system planning opportunities and an improved sense of regulatory impacts. This pilot screening tool can be viewed here.
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), a major component of California’s renewable energy planning efforts, is designed to provide effective protection and conservation of desert ecosystems while allowing for the appropriate development of renewable energy projects. Approximately 22.5 million acres of federal and non-federal California desert land are in the DRECP Plan Area. The federal portion of plan area was released by the Bureau of Land Management as a Land Use Plan Amendment (LUPA). The project is now transitioning into Phase II, which focuses on county-level planning designed to work in conjunction with the LUPA.
During Phase I of the project, CBI provided science support for this ambitious planning process including a wide range of spatial models and assessments (e.g., species distribution, intactness, conservation value, and climate change). CBI also developed and continues to maintain the DRECP Gateway (launched on September 26, 2014) and various interpretation applications to support the determination of the Final Plan and its implementation. One example of an interpretation application is the DRECP Climate Console, which was designed to allow users to explore climate projections to better understand how climate change could alter ecosystems in the California desert. It provides science-based and actionable climate data to encourage smarter, more comprehensive landscape-level conservation planning efforts and decisions.
During Phase II of the project, CBI is customizing the Gateway to support the adaptive management aspects of the LUPA and to support the county-level planning processes.
To access the gateway, please visit http://drecp.databasin.org/
To access the Climate Console, please visit http://drecp.consbio.webfactional.com/climate
To learn more about the DRECP, please visit www.drecp.org or visit the Data Basin Guide and Case Study about DRECP at http://databasin.org/articles/1408e0eed6754d68a06047aaa0e64c2b
The San Joaquin Valley Data Basin Gateway was created to support a multi-stakeholder effort to identify least conflict lands for utility scale solar development in the San Joaquin Valley in Central California. Stakeholders represented include the solar industry, farming community, ranching community, and environmental community. Each stakeholder group addressed the least conflict question from their perspectives and generated map-based results. After compiling the results, around 470,000 acres of land was identified as potentially desirable to solar developers and least conflict from the standpoint of the other groups. Phase I is complete with a final report due out in February 2016, but the Gateway persists with an extremely valuable data library (~600 datasets pertinent to the region) and other content, and stakeholders have expressed interest in continuing to use the system to continue refining the work into the future.
CBI is providing science and technical support to assist the California Energy Commission (CEC) in planning the state’s future energy needs, which includes achieving aggressive renewable energy goals with minimal damage to natural systems. Building off of previous work completed for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), CBI is working to improve access and transparency of scientific data, maps and analysis. As a subset of the work, CBI is supporting the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative 2.0 (RETI). RETI, according to the CEC, “is an open, transparent, and science-based process that will explore the abundant renewable generation resources in California and throughout the West, consider critical land use and environmental constraints, and identify potential transmission opportunities that could access and integrate renewable energy with the most environmental, economic, and community benefits.”
CBI is developing additional data, models, tools, and technical assistance that align with statewide energy and climate change adaptation planning. This work extends the information and tools previously built for the DRECP planning region to other areas of the state particularly in areas with high renewable energy potential.
Climate change and related impacts such as drought and wildfire are growing concerns throughout the state. In response, CBI is developing additional datasets and visualization applications to put this information into statewide context. CBI will deliver this data and information to the CEC and other California State agencies.