Lessons for Kansas on the failure of California’s Ivanpah Solar Project

When it went online in 2014, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert was the largest solar facility on Earth. The plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build.

When it closes next year, some 13 years ahead of schedule, the victim of newer, less expensive, and more efficient technology, the lost investment of the $2.2 billion, ($1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees) will dwarf the other failed, high-profile Green New Deal initiative, Solyndra, which went bankrupt in 2011; that California project taking $535 billion of taxpayer money with it. The U.S. Department of Energy funded both projects during the Obama Administration …