Oil's opinion

captured well by this NYT piece...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/business/energy-environment/08greenoil.html?hp

In Silicon Valley, Venture Capitalists Turn Cautious and Focus on the Short Term

from NYT...

CLEAN TECH GETS REALISTIC Venture capitalists are still chasing clean technology. Through September, $3 billion was invested in technologies that create alternative energy and conserve power, up from $1.9 billion the year before, according to the National Venture Capital Association. But big, expensive projects like building factories to manufacture solar panels or biofuels are falling out of favor.

“The economic arguments for those businesses literally went upside down in a year,” said Paul Holland, the general partner in charge of the clean tech practice at Foundation Capital.

Instead, some venture capitalists are looking at technologies that monitor energy demand, like software that tracks and regulates a building’s energy use.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/technology/start-ups/05venture.html?_r=1

Obama naming Nobel Prize winner from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as energy secretary

By Mary Anne Ostrom Mercury News

Posted: 12/10/2008 03:11:38 PM PST

Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will be Barack Obama's energy secretary, according to several media reports.

The Nobel Prize winning physicist and former chair of Stanford University's physics department, is a major supporter of developing alternative fuels and solar research and backs government mandated steps to control greenhouse gas emissions.

His selection signals that Obama plans to move ahead with his agenda of promoting environmentally friendly energy sources. And by putting a university scientist at the helm of the energy department, instead of an industry leader or political leader with no science background as had been speculated, it indicates that Obama plans to commit to a government industry partnership to develop green energy initiatives.

"It is wonderful to see another distinguished Californian be mentioned for a Cabinet level position,'' Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement. "Dr. Chu would bring extraordinary scientific accomplishments to the job of Energy Secretary at a time when science is telling us we must act to avert the ravages of global warming."

Chu, 60, of Oakland, has led the Berkeley national lab since 2004 and is a member of the board of the Hewlett Foundation.

The Associated Press, citing Democratic officials, said Obama has also selected Lisa Jackson for environmental protection agency administrator and Carol Browner as his energy "czar."

Solar thermal in Lancaster CA

From the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-outthere5-2008dec05,0,4265592.storyOUT THERE

Solar plant could be savior to struggling Lancaster: The city and surrounding Antelope Valley have been hard hit by poverty, unemployment and foreclosures. The nearly complete eSolar facility could create jobs and restore a sense of pride.
By Scott Gold

December 5, 2008

They lined up for meatball sandwiches the other night outside the Lancaster Community Shelter, in the cold of the high desert. There was a man in a fedora who'd lost his house to the bank. A college student whose loans fell through. An older woman with curlers in her bag, who planned to do her hair after dinner.

Everyone had a story to tell, a cigarette to borrow, a friend to greet. But soon, the crowd hushed as a young mother and her boyfriend walked toward the door carrying 3-week-old twins. They had no money, nowhere to stay, they said. Between them, they'd applied for a dozen jobs -- she got all gussied up for her interview at Denny's, even borrowed a pair of heels -- but they'd had a run of rotten luck, she said.

The buzz in the Antelope Valley these days is about a company called eSolar, which is putting the finishing touches on a thermal solar energy facility here -- 24,000 mirrors that glitter like diamonds when you approach on Avenue G. There are plans for several more facilities in the area, all larger, the company says.

Local officials are atwitter at the possibilities. Visitors and investors are expected from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A slew of jobs would be created; there were 225 people working last week on the Avenue G facility alone, most of them locals. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said the solar plants could be the catalyst to restoring the sort of "intellectual excitement" that existed when aerospace, still a vital industry here, was the only game in town -- when "if it went up, it came out of here," he said.

"Now, we're going to go a long way toward saving this world," the mayor said. "Right here in Lancaster."

It's heady talk, and people are listening. Lancaster and the surrounding valley are suffering, even by the standards of a community that long ago acclimated to a boom-and-bust cycle. Many here are living on the edge, and some beyond, with tens of thousands more expected to arrive in coming years.

There is a sense that development cannot come fast enough, not with shops closing, one in five people living in poverty, high unemployment and the highest mortality rate in Los Angeles County. Not with so many houses falling into foreclosure that the city of Lancaster has gone into real estate -- buying and renovating empty homes to slow the decline of neighborhoods.

"It's bad," said William Turner, 21, who got a job installing eSolar mirrors through a temp agency. He is among those vying for one of the full-time positions the company will offer soon; competition will be fierce and many of those hired will be overqualified for their jobs, officials said.

"People around here are really hurting," Turner said. "We need a change."

ESolar operations and maintenance manager Bob Holsinger was the fourth of five siblings who grew up on an Illinois soybean farm, and he still looks the part, with broad, rounded shoulders and aircraft-carrier-sized boots.

When Holsinger was young, his father dispensed one piece of advice to the kids: "Last one out, turn out the lights." It was meant, of course, to cut down on the power bill. But Holsinger always suspected it meant something else -- that whoever controlled the flow of electricity would be the last one standing, even if everything else went south. Today, after a 35-year career in energy, it turns out he might have been right.

California is the epicenter of U.S. solar technology; there are dozens of energy projects in the works. Few have generated as much anticipation as this one, if only because with 1,000 mirrors being installed each day, it is growing in stark contrast to the boarded-up storefronts and the brown, brittle lawns in front of abandoned houses.

The company uses the mirrors to focus the sun's rays on an elevated target, which produces superheated steam that turns turbines to create power. The whole thing can be assembled easily, like an Erector Set for grown-ups. Workers can put it together using four wrenches.

The mirrors can be adjusted remotely from the company's headquarters in Pasadena to ensure that they are capturing the sun. The mirrors can be fine-tuned; workers at a test site recently used the reflection to spell out the words "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILL" for a colleague.

"It's pretty slick," Holsinger said.

When eSolar flips the switch, five megawatts of electricity will be sent into the grid, enough to power roughly 5,000 homes. A second facility, far larger, is expected north of Lancaster, and there are plans for several more in the area, enough to produce 500 megawatts, perhaps, in the next decade, the company says.

"We are not going to have a carbon footprint in 10 years. We just won't have one," said the mayor, a successful lawyer given to hyperbole, and to infectious passion.

It is an unlikely development in the Antelope Valley, which remains, despite its growth and increasing diversity, a strait-laced, conservative area. "Culturally, it is somewhat new," said Barry S. Munz, vice president at Antelope Valley Engineering Inc., a contractor at the eSolar site.

But how important is it?

"We will turn flips for them," Parris said. "And, quite frankly, I don't turn flips for anybody."

Back at the homeless shelter, it's easy to see why.

Resident case manager Bobby Hampton said the shelter now serves up to 120 dinners each night, half again as many as when he started six years ago. Demand has been rising; this summer, he said, "business started booming."

A striking number of clients lost their homes to the bank; others unwittingly rented rooms in abandoned houses taken over by unscrupulous squatters, only to get kicked out when they were discovered. The shelter is now full every night.

Waiting in line for a cot, Jerry Frazier, 50, a recovering heroin addict, said he received $199 for the month through the county-funded General Relief program. He spent $175 on a month's supply of medication at a methadone clinic, leaving him $24 for the rest of the month. He's been unable to find a job, he said; a former professional musician, he just pawned the last of his 32 guitars.

"This is a working country," he said. "But there are no jobs. Not here."

Once inside, those accepted for a bed were required to bathe, then routed into a line for dinner that snaked through the hall. A volunteer began to pray. "Hats off!" a security guard shouted.

In one corner, Jennifer Schmidt, 19, and her boyfriend, Treavon Henry, 20, ate their food in silence, their twin newborns, Kory and Kody, resting in car seats on the table.

Schmidt and Henry began dating in high school and could not have imagined what has happened since. Schmidt was on the pill but got pregnant anyway. Both lost their jobs. They don't have enough money to get a market-rate apartment and have been on a waiting list for indigent housing since April.

They were living with her mother but were told to leave after Schmidt asked her not to smoke in front of the babies, Schmidt said. Then they moved in with his mother; she kicked them out, too, after Schmidt asked her not to cuss in front of the babies.

Exhausted, they slumped in Hampton's cluttered office as he filled out a voucher for a room at a motel for one night. Then they carried the twins into the chilly night.

With no car -- they sold their Acura a few months back for $500 -- they would have to walk. Each carried a twin, until Schmidt's arms couldn't take any more. Henry picked up both twins and, holding them out to his side, struggled down the street toward the motel, past auto body shops and bail bonds offices.

"It feels like we've been walking forever," Schmidt said.

Finally, they got to the motel. The marquee outside said: "KARAOKE, Sun-Wed." By the time they walked into their room, Kody was crying. He was hungry, Schmidt said, and they were out of formula.

Gold is a Times staff writer.

Momentum Slows for Alternative Energy

October 21, 2008

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

HOUSTON — For all the support that the presidential candidates are expressing for renewable energy, alternative energies like wind and solar are facing big new challenges because of the credit freeze and the plunge in oil and natural gas prices.

Shares of alternative energy companies have fallen even more sharply than the rest of the stock market in recent months. The struggles of financial institutions are raising fears that investment capital for big renewable energy projects is likely to get tighter.

Advocates are concerned that if the prices for oil and gas keep falling, the incentive for utilities and consumers to buy expensive renewable energy will shrink. That is what happened in the 1980s when a decade of advances for alternative energy collapsed amid falling prices for conventional fuels.

“Everyone is in shock about what the new world is going to be,” said V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technology, a California advocacy group. “Surely, renewable energy projects and new technologies are at risk because of their capital intensity.”

Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain both promise ambitious programs to develop various kinds of alternative energy to combat global warming and achieve energy independence.

Mr. Obama talks of creating five million new jobs in renewable energy and nearly tripling the percentage of the nation’s electricity supplied by renewables by 2025. Mr. McCain has run television advertisements showing wind turbines and has pledged to make the United States the “leader in a new international green economy.”

But after years of rapid growth, the sudden headwinds facing renewables point to slowing momentum and greater dependence on government subsidies, mandates and research financing, at a time when Washington is overloaded with economic problems.

John Woolard, chief executive officer of BrightSource Energy, a solar company, said he believed the long-term future for renewables remained promising, though “right now we are looking at tumultuous and unpredictable capital markets.”

Venture capital financing for some advanced solar projects and for experimental biofuels, like ethanol made from plant wastes, is drying up, according to analysts who track investment flows.

At least two wind energy companies have had to delay projects in recent days because of trouble raising capital. Several corn ethanol projects have been delayed for lack of financing in Iowa and Oklahoma since last month, and one plant operator in Ohio filed for bankruptcy protection last week.

Tesla Motors, the maker of battery-powered cars, recently announced it had been forced to delay production of its all-electric Model S sedan, close two offices and lay off workers.

Investment analysts say initial and secondary stock offerings by clean energy companies across global markets have slowed to a crawl since the spring, and for the full year could total less than half of the record $25.4 billion for 2007.

Worldwide project financings for new construction of wind, solar, biofuels and other alternative energy projects this year fell to $17.8 billion in the third quarter, from $23.2 billion in the second quarter, according to New Energy Finance, a research firm in London. The slide is expected to be sharper in the fourth quarter and next year.

In the United States, financing for new projects and venture capital and private equity investments in renewable energy this year might still top last year’s results because so much money was in the pipeline at the beginning of the year, but the pace has slowed sharply in the last month.

The next presidential administration, to make good on campaign rhetoric and continue supporting renewables, will have to choose alternative energy over other programs at a time of ballooning deficits. Analysts say that is no sure thing.

“Government funding for renewables is now going to have to compete with levels of government funding in other areas that were unimaginable six months ago,” Mark Flannery, an energy analyst for Credit Suisse, said.

The central questions facing renewables now, experts say, are how long credit will be tight and how low oil and natural gas prices will fall. Oil and gas are still relatively expensive by historical standards, but the prices have fallen by half since July. Some economists expect further declines as the economy weakens.

Wall Street analysts say most utilities and other builders can profitably choose big wind projects over gas-fired plants only when gas prices are $8 per thousand cubic feet or higher. Natural gas settled Monday at about $6.79 per thousand cubic feet, down from about $13.58 on July 3.

“Natural gas at $6 makes wind look like a questionable idea and solar power unfathomably expensive,” said Kevin Book, a senior vice president at FBR Capital Markets.

Government mandates already on the books, including state rules requiring renewable power generation and federal requirements for production of ethanol, ensure that to some degree, alternative energy markets will continue to exist no matter how low oil and gas prices go. But the credit crisis means some companies that would like to build facilities to meet that demand are going to have problems. “If you can’t borrow money, you can’t develop renewables,” Mr. Book said.

Renewable energy now meets 7 percent of the nation’s energy needs, and public subsidies have promoted a leap for several alternative energy sources in recent years.

Ethanol is sold nationwide as a gasoline additive, and federal legislation aims to replace a major share of the oil now imported into the United States with domestically produced biofuels in the next 15 years. Enough new wind power was installed in the United States to serve the equivalent of 4.5 million households in 2007, the third year in a row the country led all nations in new wind power.

Renewable energy has become a big business worldwide, with total investment increasing to $148.4 billion last year, from $33.4 billion in 2004, according to Ethan Zindler, head of North American research at New Energy Finance. Mr. Zindler said the upward momentum had halted, and that total investment this year was likely to be lower than last.

In the 1970s, just as in recent years, high prices for fossil fuels led to rising interest in renewables. But when oil prices collapsed in the 1980s, the nascent market for renewable energy fell apart, too. Congress eliminated tax credits for solar energy, ethanol could not compete with cheap gasoline and a wind farm boomlet in California failed to catch on in the rest of the country.

The epicenter of investment and development moved to Europe, with its strong government support for renewables, and began shifting back only when heating oil and natural gas prices shot up again in recent years.

There are some differences this time. Coal, another major competitor of renewables, remains expensive and is facing increasing scrutiny over environmental concerns.

Most important, renewable energy entrepreneurs and experts say, is the growing government and public backing for renewable energy in the United States.

“What is driving the market this time is that we’re at war and this is a security issue,” said Arnold R. Klann, chief executive of BlueFire Ethanol, a California company that is planning to make ethanol out of garbage with the help of $40 million in financing from the Energy Department.

In its recent financial rescue package, Congress provided $17 billion in tax credits to promote various forms of clean power, for everything from plug-in electric vehicles to projects that will capture and store carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants. Production and investment tax credits were extended for wind energy for one year, geothermal energy for two years and for solar energy for a full eight years.

Meanwhile more than 30 states have enacted standards demanding that utilities generate a minimum proportion — typically 10 to 20 percent — of their power from renewable sources in the next 5 to 10 years.

But some analysts say the government supports may not be enough to propel continued growth for renewables, noting that several states have already relaxed their goals.

“When they can’t meet their targets,” Mr. Book said, “they change them.”

California Propositions 7 & 10 are flawed

...posted by Dustin

The flaw is being described as a drafting "error" that excludes the feed-in-tariff for solar generators under 30MW. It is not a drafting error if you are a big utility.

...from the Chronicle.

2 energy propositions flawed, critics say

In eco-conscious California, ballot measures that support alternative energy should be the political equivalent of apple pie - impossible to oppose. But two propositions on the November ballot that would radically change California's energy future have left a sour taste in the mouths of many environmentalists, consumer advocates and utility executives.

For example, part of Proposition 7 appears to say that only renewable projects that generate 30 megawatts or more of electricity will count toward the 50 percent goal, said Ralph Cavanagh, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's energy program. One megawatt is enough to power 750 homes, and many renewable projects fall below 30 megawatts.

More...

Two Large Solar Plants Planned in California

August 15, 2008
By MATTHEW L. WALD, NYT

Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale.

continued at the NYT...

Sahara to power Europe, but who will power Africa?

Very interesting story on PRI about powering Europe with photovoltaic systems in the Sahara because the sun is obviously more consistent (in terms of day-hours and sunny days) and powerful (better angle of incidence). They say all they need is a solar farm the size of Wales...about 0.3% of the Sahara.

There is a telling "what about Africa's power" question raised by the Guardian correspondent... check out the here.

The UK's daily mail had more to say...

This is the kind of optimism we should both embrace and be cautious about at the same time. A nice idea, but who is benefiting?

Innovation Fuels Solar Power Drive

Published on Friday, July 11, 2008 by the Boston Globe

Innovation Fuels Solar Power Drive
Rising Fuel Prices, New Technology Help Make Such Generation Feasible

by Carolyn Y. Johnson

BOSTON - Solar power, which has
been the next big thing on the energy horizon for decades, may finally
be reaching a tipping point.

Long considered far too expensive to be a viable power source, solar
energy is now benefiting from technological innovation, environmental
concerns and the ever-rising cost of fossil fuels.

In the latest discovery, an MIT team yesterday announced it had
developed a new way to concentrate solar beams, potentially reducing
the cost of solar panels.

But such advances, still far from becoming commercial products, are
only a small part of the forces finally making solar look feasible.
Unlike in the early 1980s, when cheap energy prices helped derail Jimmy
Carter’s ambitions for solar power, today’s technology is getting close
to being cost-competitive with other forms of energy.

“We’re not in a hype cycle,” said Nathan Lewis, a chemistry
professor at the California Institute of Technology. “There’s a lot of
innovation we’re seeing now, regulations guaranteeing a market
expanding for the next decade. . . . If you go to Silicon Valley and
around Route 128, everyone and their brother who used to make computer
chips are now trying to make thin-film solar cells.”

In Massachusetts, the Patrick administration’s Commonwealth Solar
rebate program, implemented in January, is part of a push to increase
the amount of solar energy used from 4 megawatts to 250 megawatts over
the next decade. (By comparison, the Pilgrim nuclear plant has a
generating capacity of nearly 700 megawatts.) A novel program included
in the state’s new energy bill would allow utilities to own solar
panels for the first time.

Solar power has also benefited from competition and from scale, as
more companies begin to get into the business. Evergreen Solar Inc.,
for example, will bring part of its new solar manufacturing plant in
Devens online this month. Lux Research Inc., which follows emerging
technologies, has predicted that the solar industry will grow at nearly
30 percent a year, to reach $71 billion by 2012.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made investigation of
solar power a priority, with a number of solar-specific initiatives,
including the $10 million Solar Revolution Project this spring, the
Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center established this month, and the
MIT-Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems earlier this year.

“Tremendous progress has been made, much higher technical
performance, for much lower cost,” said John Deutch, an MIT Institute
professor who knows something about solar’s troubled trajectory.

Deutch recalls standing in the White House Rose Garden when he
worked for the Department of Energy in 1979, and laying out to
reporters the goal of filling one-fifth of America’s energy needs with
solar power by 2000. Instead, he has watched, over the past three
decades, as the portion of energy created by solar has remained at less
than 1 percent.

Still, he says, today’s situation “is not at all comparable to 1979.”

Lewis said it is not clear whether solar technology will become
mainstream through incremental improvements or whether it will take a
transformative new technology.

Still, one thing people underestimate, he said, is the scale of the
problem, which includes not just the cost of the technology, but the
challenge to manufacture and deploy new energy infrastructure. Imagine,
for starters, having to add solar panels to thousands of rooftops every
day for a decade. Because of the massive size of the energy
marketplace, solar energy will not replace significant amounts of
fossil fuels in the near future. But that also presents a huge
opportunity for any company that gets solar right.

Jonathan Mapel, an author of the new MIT study in the Journal of
Science, is cofounding Covalent Solar, a company that hopes to take
advantage of that by developing cheaper, more efficient solar panels.

“The question is, can you make a better solar panel that you can put
on somebody’s roof?” Mapel said. “The two things that matter are: You
want more power output, and you want to pay less for it.”

The work by Mapel and others could potentially do both, by using a
simple trick that makes more efficient use of sunlight and uses fewer
costly solar cells.

Solar cells are made from different materials that each operate most
efficiently when using light from a narrow band of wavelengths. By
filtering the light through a pane of glass coated with dye, Mapel and
his colleagues have been able to direct some light to solar cells that
can use it most efficiently. Those cells are placed on the edge of the
pane, requiring far fewer solar cells than if they were placed along
the surface as on conventional panels.

The remaining light passes through the pane and, if placed on a conventional solar panel, can be converted to electricity.

The researchers found that their setup increased the efficiency of
traditional panels by about 20 percent, but they believe that with a
little more tweaking, they can boost that to 50 percent.

Allen Barnett, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at
the University of Delaware, said that beyond such basic research to
improve efficiency, the industry has already reached a turning point
and is set to shift the way people use energy.

“The parallel is microelectronics,” Barnett said. “Microelectronics
started out in big universities, now they are in laptops, cellphones,
microelectronic chips all over your home. People think of solar as
replacing a coal-fired power plant; it’s really different. . . . It is
a new way to use electricity and use energy.”

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects on public lands

The following article from the NYT is timely. There will impacts from solar facilities in the vast sun drenched landscape of the west. They take up space, habitat, etc. But how can this administration reach the conclusion that building a solar power facility needs two years of review, when at the same time they are allowing drilling and mining on public lands without such a review?

I think the brightside of all is that the solar industry will have to focus on the decentralized grid; panels for rooftops, otherwise wasted space. The future of this industry will have to rely on quality and efficient panels, not the luck-of-the-draw big contracts, like those usually overbudget and underperforming. On another front, maybe they should consider planning such solar fields in the sacrafice zones like Mercury, Nevada?

June 27, 2008

Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects

By DAN FROSCH

DENVER — Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

All involve two types of solar plants, concentrating and photovoltaic. Concentrating solar plants use mirrors to direct sunlight toward a synthetic fluid, which powers a steam turbine that produces electricity. Photovoltaic plants use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy.

Much progress has been made in the development of both types of solar technology in the last few years. Photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent in 2007 compared with 2006. Eleven concentrating solar plants are operational in the United States, and 20 are in various stages of planning or permitting, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation and wildlife. In California, for example, solar developers often hire environmental experts to assess the effects of construction on the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.

Water use can be a factor as well, especially in the parched areas where virtually all of the proposed plants would be built. Concentrating solar plants may require water to condense the steam used to power the turbine.

“Reclamation is another big issue,” Ms. Resseguie said. “These plants potentially have a 20- to 30-year life span. How to restore that land is a big question for us.”

Another benefit of the study will be a single set of environmental criteria to weigh future solar proposals, which will ultimately speed the application process, said the assistant Interior Department secretary for land and minerals management, C. Stephen Allred. The land agency’s manager of energy policy, Ray Brady, said the moratorium on new applications was necessary to “ensure that we are doing an adequate level of analysis of the impacts.”

In the meantime, bureau officials emphasized, they will continue processing the more than 130 applications received before May 29, measuring each one’s environmental impact.

While proponents of solar energy agree on the need for a sweeping environmental study, many believe that the freeze is unwarranted. Some, like Ms. Gordon, whose company has two pending proposals for solar plants on public land, say small solar energy businesses could suffer if they are forced to turn to more expensive private land for development.

The industry is already concerned over the fate of federal solar investment tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews them. The moratorium, combined with an end to tax credits, would deal a double blow to an industry that, solar advocates say, has experienced significant growth without major environmental problems.

“The problem is that this is a very young industry, and the majority of us that are involved are young, struggling, hungry companies,” said Lee Wallach of Solel, a solar power company based in California that has filed numerous applications to build on public land and was considering filing more in the next two years. “This is a setback.”

At a public hearing in Golden, Colo., on Monday, one of a series by the Bureau of Land Management across the West, reaction to the moratorium was mixed.

Alex Daue, an outreach coordinator for the Wilderness Society, an environmental conservation group, praised the government for assessing the implications of large-scale solar development.

Others warned the bureau against becoming mired in its own bureaucratic processes on solar energy, while parts of the West are already humming with new oil and gas development.

Craig Cox, the executive director of the Interwest Energy Alliance, a renewable energy trade group, said he worried that the freeze would “throw a monkey wrench” into the solar energy industry at precisely the wrong time.

“I think it’s good to have a plan,” Mr. Cox said, “but I don’t think we need to stop development in its tracks.”