written 19 July, 2026
published 26 July, 2026
On Tuesday, July 14th, Sonoma Clean Power held a ribbon cutting ceremony at a solar array on Redemeyer Road, northeast of Ukiah. This 4 megawatt array, with storage, is now the largest wholesale solar array operating in the county. The power will support Sonoma Clean Power's Evergreen program, which provides 100 percent non carbon energy to their customers.
Owned by Renewable Properties, which installs this kind of grid scale power system for publicly owned power companies, the array sits on 20 acres, leased for 20 years from a local landowner. Financing was arranged in conjunction with the Saving Bank of Mendocino. The system was designed and constructed by regional companies, using local labor wherever possible.
This is a step toward a local sustainable future, albeit a relatively small step. To put things in perspective, on average, this array will produce about 5 percent of what Ukiah consumes every day, although this power goes to SCP customers in the valley. China just announced the completion of another 1,000 megawatt solar array. Around the globe, 1,000 megawatts of solar are installed every day. Some of the fastest solar growth is in Africa and Pakistan.
Even as heat waves cook the southwest, toxic smoke blankets the northeast, and damaging floods kill people in Texas, our president insanely denies the climate crisis. Despite this, solar projects accounted for almost three quarters of new domestic grid scale electrical systems installed in 2025. This is not because the power industry is concerned about the adverse climate impact of combustion fuels, but because solar and storage are the cheapest and quickest power to install, with prices continuing to fall every year. The oil industry acknowledges this fact, understanding the inevitable transformation will be driven by economics. Consequently, the actions of this administration seem doubly absurd.
As the stalemate with Iran accelerats the global shift away from fossil fuels, the president uses taxpayer funds to keep uneconomic coal plants operating, pay developers to NOT build wind arrays, and pours billions into developing untested small modular reactors (SMR). The nuclear resurgence excites the investor class, but material reality hinders progress.
Several domestic SMR's have now broken ground, but the fuel for these is problematic. Unlike the larger standard fission reactors which use 5 percent enriched uranium fuel, these new systems will use more highly enriched uranium, and some have expensive exotic fuels. Since most enriched uranium comes from Russia, billions are being invested to build new domestic enrichment factories, an expensive, time-consuming process.
Nuclear in general has a problem with their "spent fuel", which is hazardous to life for a hundred thousand years. Since the nuclear industry began 80 years ago, no country except Finland has as yet built a long-term spent fuel depository. Instead, like crazy people keeping their urine in jars in the garage, nuclear power plants keep their lethal waste in special casks on site. Each year the 94 U.S. reactors produce over 2,000 tons of spent fuel, and storage space is getting limited. Japan recently announced they are running out of space, yet they are restarting some of the reactors that were shut after Fukushima. Building more reactors makes the problem worse.
To speed development, the president has streamlined nuclear permitting and fired people at the Nuclear Regulatory Agency who monitor the design process. Nuclear history shows prioritizing speed and cost over safety is dangerous. Chernobyl resulted from flawed design and the cost saving exclusion of a containment structure: a failure that effected all Europe. Fukushima resulted from contractor's cost saving decisions to place emergency generators at sea level and build a 30 foot sea wall for protection, even though historic tsunamis had exceeded 45 feet: a failure that created a trillion dollar problem.
The financial industry likes the massive funding nuclear requires, and corporations like the centralized control that results, so it makes sense that the president should push nuclear, over and above his anti-climate fetish. However, the global appeal of solar is driven in part by how easily is can be transformative and diversified down to very small applications. Bringing electricity to a rural village in Africa, or even to individual households, is part of why solar installations are exploding in even the poorer portions of the world, something nuclear can never accomplish. By pushing nuclear and trying to kill solar, the president has abandoned the future to China.
We can have a sustainable civilization that doesn't kill the climate, create intractable waste, or bankrupt the economy.
