I see two insurmountable problems with this solar tower, in this age of rising environmental concerns and increasing influence of environmental pressure groups:
- The base of the tower covers a huge piece of land, which is now home to various desert creatures. Changing their habitat is unacceptable from the environmental protectionists' viewpoint. The precious creatures (probably some endangered species too) would probably die.
- Visual pollution. Nobody wants to have ugly structures in his backyard, let alone a half-a-mile-high tower which will be visible from a huge area. It detonates with the natural desert views of Arizona.
Because of these two reasons, this solar tower project will face years of litigation from environmental pressure groups, and in the end the project will probably stall.
You think environmentalists care more about "visual pollution", aka, "not in my back yard", than coal pollution, hydro dam flooding, nuclear meltdowns... I think maybe these people you are referring to aren't environmentalists at all.
It's planned for an extremely remote portion of the country. As of the 2010 census, the population density of La Paz county was 4 per square mile. It's quite possible that only a handful of people could end up seeing the thing.
- The base of the tower covers a huge piece of land, which is now home to various desert creatures. Changing their habitat is unacceptable from the environmental protectionists' viewpoint. The precious creatures (probably some endangered species too) would probably die.
- Visual pollution. Nobody wants to have ugly structures in his backyard, let alone a half-a-mile-high tower which will be visible from a huge area. It detonates with the natural desert views of Arizona.
Because of these two reasons, this solar tower project will face years of litigation from environmental pressure groups, and in the end the project will probably stall.