A $2.2 billion solar power plant in the Mojave Desert, built with massive federal subsidies during the Obama administration, continues to operate over the objections of both the Trump and Biden administrations, its own utility customer, and basic economic sense. California regulators have refused to let it close, and Fox News Digital reports that between $730 million and $780 million in federally backed loan obligations remain outstanding.
The Ivanpah Solar Power Plant, sprawling across more than 4,000 acres near the California-Nevada border, opened in 2014 as a flagship of the Obama-era push to subsidize renewable energy with taxpayer dollars. A decade later, the facility runs at a fraction of its promised capacity, costs ratepayers an estimated $100 million more per year than newer solar alternatives, and has left a trail of dead birds in its wake.
Yet the California Public Utilities Commission won't let it die. The commission rejected efforts by Pacific Gas & Electric to terminate its contracts with the plant, citing concerns about grid reliability as electricity demand rises, including from data centers. PG&E, the utility forced to buy Ivanpah's power, had labeled the contracts "uneconomic resources" in regulatory filings.
The project was born out of the 2008 financial crisis, when the Obama administration funneled tens of billions of dollars into green energy ventures through federal loan guarantees and grants. The Ivanpah plant received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee, funded through the same Department of Energy program that backed Solyndra, the solar company that collapsed in 2011 after receiving $535 million in government loan guarantees and triggered a congressional investigation.
On top of the loan guarantee, the U.S. Department of the Treasury handed the project a $539 million grant, roughly 30 percent of construction costs, through the Obama stimulus-era 1603 program.
The plant uses roughly 350,000 mirrors, more than 170,000 heliostats, to focus sunlight onto boilers atop nearly 460-foot towers, generating steam to drive turbines. The technology was called "concentrated solar power," and it was supposed to prove that large-scale renewable energy could work.
It didn't. In 2023, Ivanpah operated at roughly a 17 percent capacity factor, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data. The plant was originally expected to hit 25 to 30 percent. That gap matters. It means the facility produces far less electricity per dollar invested than anyone promised when the federal money was flowing.
The pattern of underperformance showed up early. Breitbart reported in 2014 that the plant produced only 254,263 megawatt-hours from January through August and 189,156 megawatt-hours in the following four months, well below original projections of more than one million megawatt-hours annually. The owners sought extensions on repaying their federal loans even as they required more natural gas than first planned to keep the system running.
A 2025 audit by California regulators identified recurring forced outages and equipment issues that could affect reliability, the very thing the commission said it was protecting by keeping the plant open.
The costs don't stay on a spreadsheet in Sacramento. They land on the people who pay electricity bills. Some analysts estimate the plant's electricity costs customers roughly $100 million more per year than power from newer solar alternatives. Regulators warned that shutting down Ivanpah could strand more than $300 million in ratepayer-funded transmission and infrastructure tied to the project, a sunk-cost trap that keeps the money flowing.
In Baker, California, the nearest town, about 50 miles from the plant, the cost of electricity is a daily burden. Lazarus Dabour, who owns the Mad Greek restaurant, told Fox News Digital what his power bills look like:
"During the summer it can be anywhere from $10,000 to $12,000... in the winter anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000."
Dabour added that the overhead eats into his bottom line. "It still restricts your bottom line when your overhead from more electricity goes up. It's a big factor," he said. Eddie Bravo, a local store worker, said his own summer bills reach between $650 and $750. "Our electricity is too high here in Baker," Bravo told Fox News Digital.
These are the people who live with the consequences of decisions made in Washington and Sacramento, business owners and workers paying inflated bills so that a politically favored project can keep running long past its useful life. It is a familiar pattern with Obama-era taxpayer commitments that no agency can fully account for.
Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley, was blunt about the technology's trajectory. He told Fox News Digital:
"The technology used at Ivanpah is no longer really competitive with a new solar farm that uses conventional solar panels."
Borenstein explained that when the plant was planned, solar thermal looked promising. "But photovoltaic costs fell much faster than anyone anticipated, and that changed the economics entirely," he said. He acknowledged the plant fell into a category of projects overtaken by cheaper technology but cautioned that walking away isn't simple: "These are long-lived assets with long-term contracts. Even if they no longer make economic sense, you can't easily just walk away."
Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University energy systems expert, was more direct. "There's no role for a concentrated solar plant without storage," he told Fox News Digital. He framed the remaining question narrowly: "It's already built. So the question is whether it's cheaper to keep it running than to replace it."
Daniel Turner, founder of the energy advocacy group Power The Future, left no room for ambiguity. He told Fox News Digital the project makes no economic sense to keep operating:
"This project makes no economic sense to keep afloat, and the market itself has shown that."
Turner called Ivanpah a "boondoggle, like most of California's large projects are a boondoggle," and added: "At some point, you have to stop throwing good money after bad."
What makes the Ivanpah saga unusual is the breadth of the opposition. Officials under both the Trump and Biden administrations supported shutting the plant down. PG&E, the utility contractually obligated to buy the power, pushed for contract termination. Energy economists across the political spectrum agree the technology is obsolete. Yet California's regulators overruled them all.
The commission's stated reason, grid reliability, deserves scrutiny. The same 2025 audit that regulators commissioned found recurring forced outages and equipment problems. A plant that keeps breaking down is a strange choice to anchor grid stability. The commission's real concern may be the $300 million in ratepayer-funded infrastructure that would be stranded, a problem that only grows worse the longer the plant limps along.
House Republicans flagged these problems years ago, noting that Obama-era renewable energy projects received tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, including risky utility-scale solar projects on federal land. A House committee observed that "despite its corporate backers, and billions in funding provided by the federal government, Ivanpah has been unable to meet its contractual agreements to supply electricity to consumers in California."
The plant's operator, NRG Energy, told Fox News Digital it remains committed to running the facility under existing agreements and providing renewable energy to California. Pat Hogan, president of CMB Ivanpah Asset Holdings, argued the plant remains viable, noting it generated about 726,000 megawatt-hours in 2024, enough to power roughly 120,000 homes. Google was also identified as one of the project's major private investors.
The financial legacy of Obama-era programs extends well beyond solar plants. From the instability plaguing ObamaCare exchanges to green energy subsidies that enriched corporate investors while sticking taxpayers with the risk, the pattern is consistent: grand promises, lavish spending, and a bill that arrives years later.
Then there is the environmental record. The plant has killed thousands of birds that flew through its concentrated solar beams, a fact that drew congressional attention and earned Ivanpah the grim nickname "solar bird-killer" from critics on Capitol Hill. For a project justified on environmental grounds, the wildlife toll adds a layer of irony that its defenders have never satisfactorily addressed.
California's renewable energy mandates required utilities to purchase power under long-term contracts, locking ratepayers into deals that made less sense with each passing year as photovoltaic panel costs plummeted. The mandates created a market distortion: even when the product was overpriced and underperforming, the buyer had no choice.
The broader accountability questions surrounding Obama-era executive decisions continue to surface in unexpected places, from legal arguments to spending commitments that outlast the administration that made them.
Not everyone near the plant views it negatively. Gregory Simons, a truck driver from Rancho Cucamonga who stopped at a gas station near the Nevada state line, told Fox News Digital: "It seems like it's doing its job... it's definitely working." Eddie Bravo, despite complaining about high electricity costs, said he "[doesn't] know much about it."
That gap between the view from the highway and the view from a ratepayer's bill captures the problem. The towers gleam in the desert sun. The mirrors turn. From a distance, it looks like progress. Up close, the numbers tell a different story: a nearly $400-megawatt facility running at 17 percent capacity, backed by hundreds of millions in outstanding federal debt, producing power that costs far more than the alternatives, kept alive by regulators who won't let the market deliver its verdict.
Ivanpah stands as perhaps the most expensive monument to the idea that Washington can pick energy winners. The Obama administration bet billions on concentrated solar power. The technology lost. Photovoltaic panels won. The market moved on. But the contracts, the debt, and the mandates remain, and so does the plant, humming along in the Mojave at ratepayer expense because California's regulatory apparatus has never met a government-backed commitment it was willing to unwind.
Federal data shows between $730 million and $780 million of the $1.6 billion federally backed loan remains outstanding. The $539 million Treasury grant is gone. The ratepayers keep paying above-market rates. And the commission that could end the bleeding has decided, against the advice of two presidential administrations and the utility itself, that the show must go on.
When the government picks winners, taxpayers always pick up the tab, and in California, they're not even allowed to stop.
