Obama Called It “Clean Energy.”
It Burns Fossil Fuels. It Incinerates 6,000 Birds a Year. And California Won’t Let It Close.

The $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Power Facility was Barack Obama’s (D) showcase for the proposition that government could reinvent American energy. Twelve years in: it burns natural gas every morning to start up, emits 46,000+ metric tons of CO₂annually, turns thousands of birds into midflight smoke plumes, and costs ratepayers $100 million a year more than the solar technology that surpassed it in 2015. Both Trump and Biden wanted it gone. California’s Democratic regulators said no.

“Clean Energy” Was the Brand. The Reality Was a Gas-Burning Mirror Farm in the Mojave.

On October 27, 2010, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (D)broke ground on the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert — a 3,471-acre array of 347,000 computer-controlled mirrors focusing sunlight on three 40-story boiler towers. The stated mission: generate 392 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity with zero fossil fuels, power 140,000 California homes, and prove that the federal government’s $90 billion clean-energy stimulus was money well spent.

The Department of Energy, under Secretary Steven Chu (D), had issued $1.6 billion in loan guarantees for the project in April 2011 — the single largest DOE clean energy loan at the time. The Treasury Department added a $539 million grant covering 30% of construction costs. Total federal exposure: over $2.1 billion before a single megawatt was produced. The plant opened on February 13, 2014.

Obama, meanwhile, was unambiguous about what this represented. In his 2011 State of the Union address, he called for 80% of American electricity to come from “clean energy sources” by 2035. He cited projects like Ivanpah as the engine that would get there. “We need to get behind this innovation,” he told the country. “America still has the most productive workers and innovative minds in the world.”

Workers Have a Name for What Happens When a Bird Flies Through. They Call Them “Streamers.”

When a bird — chasing an insect, following a migration route, or simply cruising the Mojave thermals — flies into the solar flux zone above one of Ivanpah’s towers, the concentrated sunlight from 347,000 mirrors instantly superheats its feathers. The bird ignites mid-flight. Workers at the plant call them “streamers” — for the ribbon of smoke trailing the falling carcass.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the Ivanpah site documented approximately one streamer every two minutes. The U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that 3,504 birds died at the plant in its first operational year alone. By 2016, federal biologists revised the annual death toll upward to approximately 6,000 birds per year. Environmental groups have estimated the cumulative toll over the plant’s twelve years at more than 60,000 birds.

Species affected include raptors, swallows, swifts, hummingbirds, and migratory songbirds. Bats and insects are also killed. The American Bird Conservancy described the situation plainly: “Public estimates are that thousands of birds are killed every year by this single facility.”

Desert tortoises fared no better during construction. The project was scaled back from its originally planned 440 megawatts to 392 megawatts specifically to reduce tortoise habitat destruction — and construction was temporarily halted in spring 2011 after additional tortoise populations were discovered. The federal land it sits on was pristine Mojave Desert habitat before 2010.

“Public estimates are that thousands of birds are killed every year by this single facility.”

Lewis Grove, American Bird Conservancy — E&E News

Every Morning, Obama’s “Solar” Plant Fires Up Its Natural Gas Burners.

Concentrated solar thermal power has a fundamental engineering problem that photovoltaic panels do not: the water in the boiler cools overnight, and it cannot be reheated by sunlight alone fast enough for a morning startup. So Ivanpah burns natural gas every day — not as a backup, but as a core part of operations.

In 2014, Ivanpah consumed 525 million cubic feet of natural gas — emitting 46,084 metric tons of CO₂. That figure is nearly doublethe pollution threshold at which California power plants must participate in the state’s cap-and-trade emissions trading program. The state classified Ivanpah as a “natural gas plant” under cap-and-trade rules. Its original permit approved roughly 35% of that gas consumption; actual usage was running approximately 60% above permitted levels within the first year.

The California Energy Commission allows Ivanpah to exclude natural gas consumption from its official solar output calculations unless the “generator breaker is closed” — a technical loophole that obscures the plant’s actual fossil fuel dependence. According to the Heritage Foundation’s analysis, natural gas use is responsible for approximately 30% of Ivanpah’s total output— meaning nearly a third of the electricity sold as “clean solar” comes from burning methane.

“The technology used at Ivanpah is no longer really competitive with a new solar farm that uses conventional solar panels.”

Severin Borenstein, Energy Economist, UC Berkeley — 2025

$2.2 Billion Built It. $100 Million a Year Keeps It Running. $780 Million in Federal Loans Is Still Outstanding.

The full accounting of Ivanpah’s cost to the American public:

In January 2025, NRG Energy — the plant’s primary operator — announced it was terminating its power purchase agreements with Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison and beginning the shutdown process. The reason: Ivanpah’s electricity was costing customers approximately $100 million more per yearthan power from newer photovoltaic solar farms. PG&E stated that “ending the agreements at this time will save customers money compared to the cost of keeping them through 2039.”

In 2023, the plant operated at a 17% capacity factor — compared to the 28.5% projected when the loans were approved. Its average annual output over its operational lifetime was 702,322 megawatt-hours: roughly 70% of the one million MWh it was designed to produce. A 2025 audit by California regulators identified recurring forced outages and equipment failures.

Trump Wanted It Closed. Biden Wanted It Closed. NRG Wanted It Closed. PG&E Wanted It Closed. California Said No.

The Ivanpah situation has achieved something genuinely rare in American politics: bipartisan consensus that a government-backed project is a failure. The Trump administration supported closure, citing the plant’s underperformance and its cost to consumers. The Biden administration also supported closure — even as it was otherwise expanding clean energy mandates. The two utility companies that buy Ivanpah’s power, PG&E and Southern California Edison, sought to terminate their contracts.

On December 4, 2025, the California Public Utilities Commission — whose commissioners are appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA)— unanimously voted to reject the closure agreement, ordering two of Ivanpah’s three units to continue operating. The stated reason: grid reliability concerns and the waste of “sunk costs.” The unstated result: California ratepayers continue subsidizing an environmental disaster that the plant’s own operators, both major political parties, and both purchasing utilities all want shut down.

“The Ivanpah plant was a financial boondoggle and environmental disaster. It destroyed irreplaceable pristine desert habitat.”

Julia Dowell, Sierra Club — AP News

“Ivanpah Is Yet Another Failed Green Energy Boondoggle, Much Like Solyndra.”

The Obama administration did not build Ivanpah maliciously. It built it the way governments always build showcase projects: urgently, optimistically, and with Other People’s Money. The technology was real. The mirrors work. Sunlight does heat water. But the premise — that a first-of-its-kind, government-backed megaproject could outperform commercial judgment — was wrong in 2010 and is demonstrably wrong in 2026.

By the time Ivanpah opened in 2014, conventional photovoltaic solar was already cheaper, simpler, and easier to operate. It does not burn fossil fuels to start up. It does not incinerate birds. It does not require a 3,500-acre federal land lease and 347,000 moving mirrors. It does not cost twice the market rate per megawatt-hour. PV solar was, by 2015, clearly superior on every relevant metric — and Ivanpah was already obsolete.

What “clean energy” left behind: 60,000+ birds incinerated over 12 years, 3,471 acres of Mojave Desert converted to industrial infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of metric tons of CO₂ emitted from a plant that was supposed to eliminate emissions, $2.2 billion in total costs, $780 million in outstanding federal loan exposure — and a CPUC ruling that the American public must keep paying for it.

“Ivanpah is yet another failed green energy boondoggle, much like Solyndra.”

Jason Isaac, American Energy Institute — Fox News Digital, 2026