Capitol Weekly in Sacramento yesterday ran an op-ed from me and Jim Strittholt of Conservation Biology Institute on our recent solar PV mapping effort.  Highlight passage:

When we combined the separate maps, the result was pretty remarkable: Out of the 9.5 million acres in the stakeholder study area, the groups identified 470,000 acres of ideal, non-controversial land for solar PV development, or roughly 5 percent of the Valley study area.  At a generic calculation of 1 megawatt of solar PV production from 5 acres of panels, that means the lands identified could provide 94,000 megawatts of renewable power – greater than all combined in-state generation capacity and enough to power as many as 23 million homes in California with low-cost, clean electricity.  And that’s just from the San Joaquin Valley.

You can read more about (and access) the report here, and see the joint Berkeley Law and various environmental groups’ press release here. My blog on it from last week is here.