An Ivanpah power plant tower is surrounded by mirrors, which will bounce radiation from the sun to it. Water stored inside the towers will be heated to 1,000 degrees, creating steam power. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times / May 22, 2012)
BrightSource, a private enterprise energy corporation, is the developer. BrightSource has approximately 2.4 gigawatts of power under contracts with Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Company, California’s two largest utilities. In addition, the company manages an approximately 90,000 acre development site portfolio in California and the U.S. Southwest that has the potential to accommodate approximately 9 GW of installed capacity.
Beyond the issues explored in the article, what is missing is the ownership structure of this advanced renewable energy system development. The article implies that the U.S. Department of Energy is involved. Should the Ivanpah power plant involve taxpayer monies, the government should require that the utility users/customers share in the private, individual ownership of the development, turning every customer into an owner of the power utility. This can be accomplished by forming a for-profit, professionally managed, citizen-owned “Community Investment Corporation” (CIC) or Citizens Land Bank (CLB) (www.http://cesj.org/homestead/strategies/community/cic-full-nk.html).
While the CLB would create new private sector jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, its main accent is on widespread participation, particularly in the ownership of land, technology, buildings and infrastructure that must be fabricated upon the community’s land for expanding the local economy. The Citizens Land Bank is designed to serve as a for-profit land planner and private sector developer geared to rational innovation and change at the community level.
Using the most advanced tools of the free enterprise system––especially innovative credit and financing tools-the CLB would create new owners of newly created assets, without taking existing property away from present owners.
The CLB strategy and its institutional structure for mobilizing citizen action are easily adaptable to areas of virtually any size, such as land surrounding nodes of a mass transit system, a downtown renewal area, or an inner-city neighborhood. The CLB can even be adopted for an entire city, metropolitan area or natural region of the country.
The CLB would create new opportunities for corporate executives, real estate professionals and the best advisors that money can buy, but they would be accountable to the CLB’s lenders and shareholders through the CLB’s broadly representative board of directors. Local enterprises could then compete more dynamically in the global marketplace without special protections or subsidies.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-solar-heat-plume-20120621,0,917543.story
