EDITORIAL: Taxpayers may lose green at ballyhooed solar plant

Here’s yet another example of the financial perils of allowing government bureaucrats to manipulate the market with someone else’s money for some perceived public benefit — and this one is right in our own backyard.

Last week, a major California utility — Pacific Gas &Electric — announced that it will no longer buy power from the Ivanpah solar plant off Interstate 15 near the Nevada-California border. As a result, two of the plant’s three towers will shut down next year — and the third will probably follow.

This is in stark contrast to the fanfare that characterized Ivanpah’s opening in 2014, made possible thanks to a $1.6 billion U.S. taxpayer contribution courtesy of the Obama administration. One solar official heralded the moment as a “dawn of a new era in power generation in the United States.”

What was it that Robert Burns wrote about “the best laid plans”?

Instead, the plant became better known as a prolific executioner of wildlife, particularly of the flying kind. The massive fields of mirrors that directed sunlight to the tops of tall towers generated red-hot rays that were lethal to birds. Estimates were that the Ivanpah plant burned up at least 6,000 birds a year.

But none of this was on the minds of California regulators a decade ago when they eagerly allowed Pacific Gas &Electric and Southern California Edison to bill ratepayers for the more expensive clean energy technology. Regulators insisted that the cost of generating solar power at Ivanpah would fall over time, benefiting California residents.

But as usual, the market proved more accurate at identifying trends than federal or state bureaucrats. The technology that ran the Ivanpah plant — concentrated solar power — “never worked as well as expected,” the Los Angeles Times reported this week. “Meanwhile, solar photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly to electricity got super cheap.”

The cost of photovoltaic solar is now half that of the power generated at Ivanpah. As a result, PG&E — under pressure to bring down exorbitant utility costs in a state that has been openly hostile to traditional energy producers — cut a deal with the plant’s owners to stop purchasing Ivanpah power. California Edison may soon take a similar road, according to the Times, which would essentially be the death knell for the project.

American taxpayers remain on the hook for the $1.6 billion handout, “and it’s unclear” whether Ivanpah’s owners will pay it back, the Times reports. Perhaps the country will get lucky. But it’s more likely that Ivanpah will become just another expensive symbol — alongside the $535 million Solyndra flop — of state and federal central planning gone awry.