Report Says Clean Energy Better for Navajo Economic Development than Desert Rock

Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (Diné CARE) held a press conference in Santa Fe on Friday, January 18, 2008 and released a new report that spells out a host of renewable energy alternatives to Desert Rock, a controversial coal-fired power plant proposed for the Navajo Reservation. Dine CARE and other environmental groups have argued that Desert Rock, which would be the third coal-fired plant in the Four Corners region, would harm the environment and residents' health

The comprehensive report contains more than 160 pages and dozens of maps, pie charts and graphs showing how renewable energy projects would compare to Desert Rock. It also provides a comprehensive look at how the tribe's Diné Fundamental Law—based on centuries of customary, traditional, natural and common law—can be applied to the modern problems of resource management and energy development.

Investing in renewable energy development and energy efficiency could provide more jobs and economic benefits for the Navajo Nation than building the proposed $3 billion Desert Rock Energy Project, according to the economic analysis, prepared in consultation with Ecos Consulting.

Solar power plant design prototype

The report compares sources of clean energy, such as solar and wind power, with coal, assessing economic factors such as short- and long-term employment, financial risks, environmental and health impacts, potential costs of carbon pollution, and profitability for the tribe. When the estimated economic benefits and costs of the proposed 1,500-megawatt pulverized coal power plant are weighed against benefits and costs of renewable energy development, the analysis determined that “developing clean-energy resources rather than coal provides a net economic advantage.”

“Wind, solar and energy-efficiency technologies, which are cost-effective, reliable and available, would provide greater Navajo economic development and lower cost electricity than Desert Rock, with fewer negative consequences and more sustainable benefits,” concluded Ecos Consulting co-author Chris Calwell. “Burning coal to produce electricity is not even the best, let alone the only form of economic development for the Navajo Nation.”

This claim counters the assumptions in the recent Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Desert Rock prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. The federal government’s analysis predetermined the need to use Navajo coal resources without considering alternative forms of economic development and energy resources already available to the tribe.

The report states that Northern Arizona University found potential wind capacity on tribal lands in northeastern Arizona to be over 11,000 megawatts. There's also the possibility of more than 48,000 megawatts of solar generation on Navajo land, according to the report.

Click to read the entire release.

To obtain a copy of the report by Ecos Consulting, please send an email to:

• Dailan Long, email: dailan.jake@gmail.com
• Lori Goodman, email: kiyaani@frontier.net

To keep current or to get involved in activism on this issue, visit the Desert-Rock-Blog and the website of Diné CARE.

You can find some of our previous coverage of this issue here and here, including links to additional posts and other sources of information.