Burning Man becomes the newest opponent in Geothermal Feud
One of the darkest cities in America is located about 100 miles north of Reno where the lights are dim and rarely lit until a week in the summer when fireworks and LEDs glow the sky and mountains.
In tiny Gerlach, just outside Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, residents have watched the Burning Man festival grow over the past 30 years into a spectacle of nearly 80,000 countercultural hippies and tech billionaires, which provides an economic lifeline for the unincorporated city. Now Burning Man and Gerlach are more closely aligned, joining conservationists and a Native American tribe in an alliance against a powerful adversary: Ormat technologythe largest geothermal energy company in the country.
Both Burning Man and Ormat share a vision for a greener future, but neither can agree on the way forward.
The festival promotes self-sufficiency and leaves no trace of its short-lived metropolis, yet contributes to a huge environmental footprint; the energy company is set in the future by combating climate change, but its clean energy facilities are threatening local habitats while making significant profits.
The dilemma has hampered similar projects worldwide, highlighting the tension between the need to combat climate change and the cost of doing so with clean energy. What compromises must be made in the pursuit of a sustainable future?
Experts say the answer comes down to the number 1 rule in real estate: location, location, location.
“Devil’s in the details with the exact spot,” said Shaaron Netherton, the executive director of Friends of the Nevada Wilderness. The organization has joined a court case to block Ormat’s project, which would explore potential geothermal resources in Gerlach.
Several Ormat initiatives have stalled or been forced to relocate due to concerns about potential threats to endangered species such as the bleached sandhill skipper, a rare butterfly; populations of sage grouse; the steamer buckwheat; and, most recently, the Dixie Valley trail.
Opponents of Ormat’s project plans in Dixie Valley, Nev., fear it would drain surface resources and push the little toad to extinction. “Geothermal power has a dark, dirty little secret: They dry up hot springs every time,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin director.
Still other plants, such as those of Ormat Tsuchiyu Onsen plant in Fukushima, Japan, merge with neighboring hot springs, inspiring the Japanese to rethink the potential of geothermal energy, which generates electricity using fluids from the ground.
Ormat said in a statement that it recognized the value of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. “Conserving its resources is important not only for residents, but for our long-term success,” the company said.
Nevada’s geothermal resources have become a controversial topic. The state, known as the “golden child of geothermal,” contributes 24 percent of the country’s geothermal energythe highest after California, and produces nearly 10 percent of its electricity using geothermal energy.
Ormat has 15 plants in Nevada, contributing 433 megawatts to the state’s electrical grid — enough to power 325,000 homes. Geothermal environments including hot springs, geysers and steam vents along theRing of Fire”, the tectonic path that encircles the Pacific Ocean is home to a wide variety of biodiverse ecosystems. They can also serve as sacred sites for indigenous tribes and provide spring water to rural towns such as Gerlach.
Loss of drinking water is one of the many concerns of the residents of Gerlach about Ormat’s proposed project. Another is subsidence, the gradual subsidence of land that already exists in certain parts of the city.
“They’re building the factory on the aquifer that Gerlach sits on. Gerlach will sink,” said Will Roger, who, along with his partner, Crimson Rose, are founders of Burning Man and have lived in Gerlach for 10 years. “That means the foundations of our houses will break and we will be condemned.”
Ormat worked to ensure there would be “no significant environmental or economic losses from exploration or development” of the site, the company said in its statement. “Geothermal development can bring numerous benefits to communities, especially in rural towns like Gerlach.”
The aquifer is also home to the Great Boiling Springs, studied by NASA, among others, for its rarity microbial similarities to conditions on Earth billions of years ago. Locals fear that the plant could irreversibly affect the resource by mixing geothermal fluids with groundwater.
These are “geological uncertainties,” said Roland N. Horne, a professor of earth sciences at Stanford University. He explained that older steam plants do dried up hot springsbut most of the Ormat plants, including those in Gerlach, continue binary technology in which geothermal water never leaves the ground. Binary power plants generate energy through a heat exchanger “without any emissions of geothermal fluid or gases,” he said.
Still, binary plants are not infallible. At Ormat’s nearby Jersey Valley plant, the wells dried up after operating for a few years. Ormat claims there is no evidence that the drought was caused by the plant, instead attributing it to a poorly clogged mine core hole.
To further complicate matters in Gerlach, the plant would encroach on resources that are culturally important to the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe. Randi Lone Eagle, the president of the tribe, said the Bureau of Land Management did not consult them enough before the project was given the green light. “Tribes want to be informed about that process well in advance because we often come to the table when the project is already done,” she said.
Critics of the factory say the city’s 130 residents could also be exposed to light, noise and pollution, with views of the desert and historical emigrant routes tarnished by the presence of an industrial factory thirty meters away. These risks were not weighed when the Bureau of Land Management found out “no significant influence” in his environmental assessment of the exploration project.
“It’s kind of a NIMBY thing, but so much more,” says Mr. Roger, the co-founder of Burning Man, whose 2-acre home has 50 trees, a labyrinth, chickens, and an aquaponics system that harvests tilapia and their greenhouse fertilized. . “It’s not just ‘not in my backyard,’ but don’t ruin my backyard.”
Last month, local authorities issued a permit for Ormat to “temporarily investigate whether a commercially viable geothermal resource exists” in Gerlach, Ormat said in his statement, a build-up to what is likely to be a protracted conflict.
Burning Man organizers say when it comes to their social principles, they do what they preach. Sustainability projects funded by the Burning Man Project, the non-profit organization that runs the festival, are popping up like mushrooms in the city. The organization claims it “owns more than half of the commercial real estate in Gerlach”, furthering its goal of building a permanent community.
As part of an effort to reduce the festival’s annual carbon footprint by 100,000 tons by 2030, the Burning Man Project has outlined green initiatives such as providing more “solar installations for artwork and RVs” and “having serious conversations” about what art should be burned, Ms Rose said.
But it is an ambitious goal. About 90 percent of Burning Man’s emissions are caused by cars, RVs and planes transporting thousands of attendees to the remote desert.
Mr Roger said he hopes greener networks will attract more electric vehicles to the festival. Unfortunately, electric cars require lithium-ion batteries extracted from plants such as these Battery fuse plans to build outside Gerlach and is likely to suffer a similar setback.
He added that he had no plans to shrink the festival to compensate for its carbon footprint.
“Burning Man changes lives, so if we can wake people up there, it’s all worth it to me,” he said. “I don’t want to lower the number; I’d like to raise it.”