The full California Energy Commission (CEC) unanimously approved NextEra Energy Resources' 250MW Beacon Solar Energy Project, the first concentrating solar power plant (CSP) to be approved in the state in a generation.
The CEC, which will take final decisions on several other large solar thermal plants in the coming weeks, has been racing to review the projects.
The permitting process has been lengthy - Beacon has been under review since March 2008 - and often contentious, encompassing issues of desert land use, protection of threatened and endangered species, and water use.
"Today’s action begins the journey of increasing clean renewable energy in California,” CEC Chairman Karen Douglas says in a statement.
According to the CEC, it hasn't approved a CSP plant since February 1990, when it gave the go ahead to Luz Solar Electric Generating Systems (SEGS) IX and Luz SEGS X.
A subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, the project development unit of energy company FPL Group, proposed the large-scale parabolic trough project on fallow agricultural land at the edge of the Mojave Desert in Kern County.
Unlike several other large CSP projects rushing to obtain permits this summer, Beacon would not be built on federal land and therefore does not require a seperate right of way from the Bureau of Land Management.
One major box is yet to be checked by NextEra - a purchaser for the gigawatts of energy Beacon would crank out each year.
Californian utilities are hungry for green energy to fulfill their increasing renewables requirements under state law.
The state is debating whether to elevate its current requirement that utilities get 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of this year, to 33% by 2020.
Source: ReCharge
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