Barack Obama promised Americans a green energy revolution. Billions of taxpayer dollars, he assured us, would be “invested” in a cleaner, brighter future — one powered by the sun, the wind, and the boundless confidence of Washington bureaucrats who’d never so much as managed a parking lot. Great rhetoric. Even better PowerPoint slides. Terrible results.
Years removed from the Obama presidency, Americans are still uncovering the wreckage of those promises. Not just in wasted dollars — though the sums will make your head spin — but in genuine environmental destruction wrought by the very people who lecture the rest of us about saving the planet. One project in the California desert stands as the crown jewel of this hypocrisy.
From Fox News:
More than a decade after it opened, an Obama-era taxpayer-backed “clean energy” solar plant in California still burns fossil fuels and kills thousands of birds each year.
The Ivanpah Solar Power Plant, a massive facility in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada border, uses hundreds of thousands of mirrors to reflect sunlight into three towering structures, generating intense heat to produce electricity.
That’s right. Over a decade later, the flagship green energy project Obama’s administration championed is still draining public funds — and it still can’t function without burning the very fossil fuels it was designed to replace. Some gift.
A billion-dollar boondoggle — and the bill is still due
Let’s talk numbers. The Ivanpah plant was propped up by more than $1.6 billion in federally backed loans, plus a $539 million grant courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. That’s roughly $2.2 billion in taxpayer exposure. Hundreds of millions remain unpaid. Let that sink in for a moment.
Meanwhile, the technology powering Obama’s pet project is now widely considered obsolete. Newer photovoltaic solar systems produce electricity more cheaply, more efficiently, and without combustion. Officials in both the Trump and Biden administrations recognized the obvious and supported shutting the facility down. California regulators? They refused. The grid still needs it, they insist. Apparently ideology outlasts arithmetic.
Here’s the real kicker: even the Sierra Club thinks this thing is a disaster. Julia Dowell of the organization called Ivanpah a “financial boondoggle and environmental disaster” that “killed thousands of birds and tortoises” and proved that “not all renewable technologies are created equal.”
When the Sierra Club and fiscal conservatives land on the same side of an argument, you know something has gone spectacularly wrong.
Thousands of birds, burned alive in the name of ‘clean energy’
Squandered public money is damning enough. But the environmental carnage Obama’s solar monument inflicts is almost beyond belief — particularly from a crowd that never stops preaching about ecological stewardship.
The plant’s 350,000 mirrors concentrate sunlight into beams so ferocious that birds flying through them catch fire mid-flight. Federal researchers have a tidy name for it: “streamers.” A sanitized term for birds trailing smoke as their feathers ignite and char. The U.S. Geological Survey has video. Peregrine falcons have been recovered with feathers curled and blackened from the heat. Thousands of birds perish at the site every single year.
Lewis Grove of the American Bird Conservancy didn’t mince words. The trade-off, he said, is “generally not worth it for birds.” The project also bulldozed 4,000 acres of high-quality desert habitat, displacing protected desert tortoises — dozens of which went unaccounted for during early operations. So much for conservation.
The ‘clean energy’ plant that runs on natural gas
One final, almost laughable detail. This beacon of Obama-era green ambition burns natural gas every morning just to boot up. Operators actually sought — and received — permission to increase their gas consumption by roughly 60 percent above original projections.
The annual output? Between 25,000 and 30,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide — sufficient to land the plant squarely in California’s cap-and-trade program alongside conventional fossil fuel facilities. A “solar” plant, regulated as a polluter. You can’t make this up.
From Fox News:
“If oil and gas spills a drop, literally a drop, the entire operation is shut down. And to an extent that’s a good thing,” Daniel Turner, founder of Power The Future, told Fox News Digital. “But you label something ‘green’ or ‘clean’ and all regulations are waived.”
Two sentences. That’s all it takes to capture the entire scam.
Barack Obama departed the White House years ago, but his green energy legacy keeps extracting its toll — from American wallets, from desert wildlife, and from whatever shred of credibility the “clean energy” movement once possessed. Ivanpah doesn’t stand in the Mojave as a monument to progress. It’s a 4,000-acre testament to what happens when government plays venture capitalist with your money, nobody tracks the consequences, and the people responsible are long gone before the birds stop burning.
Key Takeaways
- Obama’s $2.2 billion “clean energy” gamble still costs taxpayers, with hundreds of millions unpaid.
- Ivanpah incinerates thousands of birds annually while claiming environmental virtue.
- This “solar” facility burns natural gas daily, producing tens of thousands of metric tons of CO₂.
- Green energy projects receive regulatory free passes that would instantly shut down any oil or gas operation.
The post Obama-Era Ivanpah Solar Plant Still Burns Fossil Fuels, Kills Thousands of Birds Despite Billions in Taxpayer Funding appeared first on Patriot Journal.
