A $2.2 billion solar power plant in the Mojave Desert, built with massive federal subsidies during the Obama administration, continues to drain ratepayers and taxpayers alike, even as officials from both parties have tried to shut it down. California regulators won't allow it.
The Ivanpah Solar Power Plant, a sprawling facility of more than 4,000 acres and roughly 350,000 mirrors near the California-Nevada border, opened in 2014 as a flagship of the federal government's push into green energy. A decade later, the plant operates far below expectations, costs customers an estimated $100 million more per year than newer solar alternatives, and still carries between $730 million and $780 million in outstanding federal loan obligations.
Yet the California Public Utilities Commission has rejected efforts to terminate the plant's power contracts, keeping ratepayers locked into paying for electricity that the market no longer wants at the price it commands. The result is a case study in what happens when government bets big on politically favored technology and then refuses to admit the bet went wrong.
Ivanpah uses concentrated solar power, a technology that focuses sunlight from more than 170,000 heliostats onto boilers perched atop three towers nearly 460 feet tall. The reflected heat creates steam that drives turbines. When the project was planned, this approach looked promising.
It no longer does. In 2023, the plant operated at roughly a 17% capacity factor, Fox News Digital reported, citing Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data. The facility was originally expected to hit 25% to 30%. That gap, between what was promised and what was delivered, represents real money extracted from real customers every month.
A 2025 audit by California regulators identified recurring forced outages and equipment issues that could affect reliability. So the plant underperforms, breaks down, and still costs more than the alternatives. And taxpayers helped build it.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury provided a $539 million grant covering about 30% of construction costs. A $1.6 billion federal loan backed the rest. Between $730 million and $780 million of that loan remains outstanding, according to federal data. Google invested hundreds of millions more in the project's development. The private sector, at least, can write off a bad investment. Taxpayers don't get that option.
Officials under both the Trump and Biden administrations supported shutting Ivanpah down. Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility that buys the plant's electricity, has pushed to terminate its contracts, describing them in regulatory filings as "uneconomic resources." PG&E argued that ending the agreements would save customers money compared with continuing to purchase power from the facility.
AP News reported that PG&E reached an agreement with Ivanpah's owners to terminate power contracts early, a deal that could close two of the plant's three units starting in 2026, if regulators approve. NRG Energy, which operates the facility, acknowledged the economics have shifted.
NRG told AP that Ivanpah could not compete with lower-cost photovoltaic solar and battery storage, and said the site may eventually be repurposed for photovoltaic energy production.
"Initially the prices were competitive but advancements over time in photovoltaics and battery storage have led to more efficient, cost effective and flexible options for producing reliable clean energy."
That was NRG's own assessment. Even the plant's operator concedes the technology has been overtaken. Yet the California Public Utilities Commission rejected efforts to terminate the contracts, citing concerns about grid reliability as electricity demand rises, including increased demand from data centers. Regulators warned that shutting down Ivanpah could strand more than $300 million in ratepayer-funded transmission and infrastructure tied to the project.
In other words, the state poured so much money into supporting this plant that walking away now would expose just how much was wasted. The sunk-cost logic is doing all the work.
Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told Fox News Digital that the technology has been left behind.
"The technology used at Ivanpah is no longer really competitive with a new solar farm that uses conventional solar panels."
Borenstein noted that when the plant was planned, solar thermal looked like a promising approach. But photovoltaic costs collapsed faster than anyone expected.
"But photovoltaic costs fell much faster than anyone anticipated, and that changed the economics entirely."
To his credit, Borenstein acknowledged the difficulty of unwinding large infrastructure projects with long-term contracts. "Even if they no longer make economic sense, you can't easily just walk away," he said. That's true, but it's also the argument that keeps every government boondoggle alive long past its expiration date.
Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University energy systems expert, was more blunt about the technology's future. He told Fox News Digital there is no role for a concentrated solar plant without storage. But he stopped short of calling for closure, framing the question as whether keeping it running is cheaper than replacing it.
"It's already built. So the question is whether it's cheaper to keep it running than to replace it."
That question has an answer. Some analysts estimate the plant's electricity costs customers roughly $100 million more per year than power from newer solar alternatives. Over the remaining life of the contracts, that's a staggering premium imposed on California ratepayers for the privilege of keeping an obsolete facility online.
California's renewable energy mandates required utilities to purchase power under long-term contracts, helping ensure demand for projects like Ivanpah even as newer, cheaper technologies emerged. The mandates created a captive market. The people paying the bill had no say in the matter.
In Baker, the nearest town to the plant on the California side, about 50 miles away, residents feel the weight of the state's energy policies. Lazarus Dabour, who owns the Mad Greek restaurant there, described his electricity costs to Fox News Digital.
"During the summer it can be anywhere from $10,000 to $12,000... in the winter anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000."
Dabour said the overhead from electricity restricts his bottom line. "It's a big factor," he said. For a small business owner in a desert town, those numbers are not abstractions. They are the difference between staying open and closing down.
Eddie Bravo, a local store worker, said his personal electricity bills can reach between $650 and $750 in the summer. "Our electricity is too high here in Baker," he said. He told Fox News Digital he notices the plant when he drives to Las Vegas but doesn't know much about it. Most Californians probably don't. They just pay for it.
Daniel Turner, founder of the energy advocacy group Power The Future, did not mince words about what the project represents. He told Fox News Digital the market has already rendered its verdict.
"This project makes no economic sense to keep afloat, and the market itself has shown that."
Turner called Ivanpah a "boondoggle" and argued it is being kept alive for political reasons, with costs passed on to customers. "At some point, you have to stop throwing good money after bad," he said.
The comparison to Solyndra is unavoidable. That solar company collapsed after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees, becoming a symbol of the Obama administration's green-energy gambles. Ivanpah hasn't collapsed, but only because regulators won't let it. The federal loan exposure is larger. The ongoing costs to ratepayers are real and recurring. And the facility kills thousands of birds that fly through its concentrated solar beams, an environmental consequence that green-energy advocates have largely chosen to ignore.
NRG Energy told Fox News Digital it remains committed to running the plant under existing agreements and providing renewable energy to California. That commitment is easier to maintain when regulators guarantee a captive buyer.
The Ivanpah saga exposes a pattern that taxpayers and ratepayers should recognize by now. The federal government subsidized a massive project with public money. The technology failed to deliver on its promises. The private operator acknowledges the economics no longer work. The utility that buys the power wants out. Officials from both parties have supported closure.
And still it grinds on, because California's regulatory apparatus has built an entire infrastructure of mandates, contracts, and transmission investments around it. Shutting it down means admitting the scale of the misallocation. Keeping it open means forcing customers to pay above-market rates indefinitely for electricity they could get cheaper elsewhere.
The open questions are telling. What are the specific terms and expiration dates of PG&E's contracts? Which federal offices under both administrations pushed for closure, and what exactly did they recommend? What would it actually cost to replace Ivanpah's output with modern photovoltaic solar? The public deserves answers.
What we know is damning enough. A nearly 400-megawatt facility, built with more than $2 billion in public and private capital, operates at a fraction of its promised capacity, costs ratepayers roughly $100 million a year more than alternatives, carries hundreds of millions in outstanding federal debt, and has been flagged by auditors for recurring equipment failures.
When the government picks winners, taxpayers are always the losers who get picked last. Ivanpah isn't a monument to clean energy. It's a monument to what happens when political ambition writes checks that physics and economics can't cash.
