Energy

IVANPAH VALLEY, Calif. -- Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the "power tower" emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket.

Clustered nearby are hangar-sized assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 acres of public land. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors -- each the size of a garage door -- are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will become six square miles of gleaming reflectors, sweeping from Interstate 15 to the Clark Mountains along California's eastern border.

BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar power project will soon be a humming city with 24-hour lighting, a wastewater processing facility and a gas-fired power plant. To make room, BrightSource has mowed down a swath of desert plants, displaced dozens of animal species and relocated scores of imperiled desert tortoises, a move that some experts say could kill up to a third of them.

DENVER — The federal government’s new plan for oil shale development on public lands would keep activity off thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive areas, with new leases initially being issued strictly for research on how to commercially produce oil from oil shale in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.

DENVER -- A federal appeals court must decide if the Obama administration gave energy companies enough notice that it was scrapping Bush-era energy leases near national parks in Utah, the auction for which prompted an environmental activist to drive up prices with his bidding in an act of civil disobedience.

BOUNTIFUL — Millions of additional dollars would be devoted to public schools and higher education under the budget proposal Gov. Gary Herbert unveiled Monday.

Utah is adding students faster than it’s hiring teachers, and Herbert said he was only able to hold classroom sizes steady in the face of “fast, dramatic growth.”

OGDEN -- There is still time to apply for financial assistance from the Home Energy Assistance Target Program.

Workers at Ogden Cottages of Hope Prosperity Center are offering to help those who qualify apply for the help.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- One day in the not-too-distant future, we might be filling our cars with fuel made from useless grass.

A biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has transferred a gene from a variety of corn into a widespread, fast-growing species of the grass, and transformed it into what could become an important source of biofuel.

OGDEN -- Applications for home energy assistance through the Home Energy Assistance Target program will be taken beginning Nov. 1 by the Utah Division of Housing and Community Development.

The federal program helps eligible families pay for home heating, cooling and other energy costs and helps weatherize homes.

"During these tight economic times, communities throughout Utah have seen increased demand on key services such as energy assistance for low-income families," said Gordon Walker, director of the Division of Housing and Community Development.