Renewable Repercussions

On a recent research scouting trip in the Great Basin, Meg Mills-Novoa and her colleague Sophia Borgias were “staggered” by the number of lithium claim stakes they saw popping up across the Nevada desert floor.

“We could immediately see the extent and pace of change, with literally hundreds of claims that had clearly been staked in just the past few months,” says Mills-Novoa, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and the Energy and Resources Group.

As California ramps up its decarbonization efforts to combat climate change, a mining and renewable energy boom is underway in the Great Basin—the vast, water-scarce region stretching east of the Sierra Nevada to the Colorado Plateau and from southeast Oregon to Southern California and northern Mexico. The dramatic expansion of infrastructure, however, could have dire impacts on the Great Basin’s scarce water supplies, desert ecosystems, and rural and Indigenous communities.

“We urgently need climate action,” says Mills-Novoa, who leads UC Berkeley’s Climate Futures Lab. “But how do we balance the crucial imperative of responding to climate change while not sacrificing vulnerable places and communities? Climate equity is about confronting these challenges, not pretending that they don’t exist.”

Mills-Novoa and Borgias are co-principal investigators of a three-year project studying the impacts of the low-carbon energy transition on the Great Basin’s water resources and equity implications for the people who live there. The project, which was recently awarded $700,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, combines geospatial analysis, extensive review of regulations and water rights, and in-depth qualitative research.

“The Great Basin is often overlooked as an empty desert, but in fact there’s so much vibrance there in terms of both ecosystems and human communities,” says Borgias, an assistant professor in Boise State University’s School of Public Service.

The US Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 spurred a boom in lithium, solar, and geothermal projects, with an estimated $2.7 billion in decarbonization-related investments in Nevada alone, according to the Department of Energy.

As of mid-2024, nearly 23,000 lithium-mining claims have been staked and 83 lithium mines have been proposed in Nevada, all in service of extracting minerals for the batteries needed to store electrical power from renewable energy sources. Millions of acres have been designated as potential sites for solar farms; some 65 geothermal plants have been leased or are under development; and increasing numbers of pumped-storage projects—which use large volumes of water as a giant battery—are underway.

At the same time, four-fifths of the Great Basin is public lands managed by federal and state governments, which also encompass the traditional lands of dozens of Tribal Nations. “If you care about public lands in the desert, then renewable energy is your main concern,” says Patrick Donnelly, BS ’14 Conservation and Resource Studies, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity and a member of a board advising Mills-Nova and Borgias. “Energy storage has become more important recently, and the industry has set its sights on the Great Basin and Mojave Desert.”

Geothermal and lithium extraction require enormous amounts of water and can disturb delicate desert ecosystems and threaten endemic and endangered species such as Tiehm’s buckwheat, Dixie Valley toad, desert tortoise, and dozens of springsnail species.

“Nevada has numerous aquifers and water basins that are in overdraft, meaning that more water is currently being pumped out for agricultural and human needs than is naturally recharged,” Mills-Novoa says. “It’s one of our most water-scarce states.”

As human-environment geographers, Mills-Novoa and Borgias study the relationships between people and environments. Longtime collaborators and close friends, they met at the University of Arizona, where they both earned PhDs in geography and worked together on several climate and water justice research projects in Latin America and the western United States.

 In August 2022, the duo facilitated a workshop at the first Great Basin Water Justice Summit, during which community partners coalesced around the need to develop data-visualization tools for critical mineral and renewable energy development and ethnographic, place-based storytelling to highlight potential impacts on the region’s often-ignored and marginalized communities.

“We wanted to build a research program that serves the needs of those folks on the front lines of the green transition and uncovers what tools can be of use to them,” Mills-Novoa says.

With seed grants from the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative and Boise State’s School of Public Service, Mills-Novoa and Borgias laid the groundwork for their Great Basin project in 2023, scouting and meeting with stakeholders across Nevada.

Going forward, the project will focus on seven regional case studies, including Clayton Valley, home to the only existing lithium brine operation in North America; Rhyolite Ridge, a proposed hardrock mine at the largest known lithium-boron deposit in North America; Fish Lake Valley, an alkali playa with hundreds of new lithium claims and new road construction for lithium and geothermal exploration; and Amargosa Valley, where local officials are petitioning to prevent lithium exploration due to potential impacts on Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.

The research team will conduct dozens of stakeholder interviews in each area, host workshops in several rural communities, and support two tribal forums on energy transitions and water justice led by advisory board members from the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission and Western Shoshone Defense Project. They will develop an interactive, online map aggregating regulatory and water-rights information from the multitude of state and federal agencies involved; easier access to this information will help communities provide input and secure community-benefit and harm-reduction agreements related to renewable energy development in their backyards. They will also produce story maps—interactive, multimedia websites—focused on each case study area.

“We hope that people can look at this region and the energy transitions that are unfolding with more information about what the implications are,” Borgias says.

Donnelly, who lives in Shoshone, California, near Death Valley National Park, says he’s thrilled to partner with Mills-Novoa and Borgias and has already made community connections that will help advance the Center for Biological Diversity’s efforts to protect species and ecosystems in the Great Basin. “Meg and Sophia are getting their hands dirty,” Donnelly says. “They’re working with us and not on us.”