Brightsource Energy

SAN JOSE — Solar thermal start-up BrightSource Energy has shelved its plans for an initial public offering amid a turbulent stock market, a challenging year for solar energy companies and tepid interest from investors. The Oakland company said late Wednesday that it had decided not to pursue its IPO because of "adverse market conditions" and intended to withdraw the S-1 registration document on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "While we received significant interest from potential investors, the continued market and economic volatility are not optimal conditions for an IPO," Chief Executive John Woolard said in a statement.

BrightSource Energy has suspended its application to build a $2.7-billion solar power plant at Hidden Hills, saying it needed to redesign the Inyo County project and the delay would lead to financial uncertainty. With the project nearing final stages of approval from the California Energy Commission, BrightSource considered adding power storage to the 500-megawatt facility. But doing so would trigger another round of time-consuming and costly engineering and environmental analyses.

Stubborn does not come close to describing the desert tortoise, a species that did its evolving more than 220 million years ago and has since remained resolutely prehistoric. Its slowpoke take on biological adaptation has exposed modern vulnerabilities. The persnickety reptile is today beset by respiratory infections and prone to disease. Its only defenses are the shell on its back and the scent of its unspeakably foul urine. FOR THE RECORD: The subheadline on an earlier online version of this article erred in describing the desert tortoises as "endangered creatures.

Bay Area clean-tech company SolarCity Corp. had an uncertain path to its initial public offering, delaying and adjusting the size of its debut this week, but the stock was off to a running start Thursday in its first day of trading. The share price has boomed as much as 58.7% in trading so far on Nasdaq, hitting $12.70 after opening at $9.25. The San Mateo-based company sold 11.5 million shares at $8 each, raising $92 million total. The price values SolarCity at $584.6 million.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is planning to build three large solar power plants in the Mojave Desert. The three installations together will generate enough electricity for more than 375,000 homes. They'll be designed and built by BrightSource Energy Inc. of Oakland, with the first plant starting operation as early as 2011.

BrightSource Energy has suspended its application to build a $2.7-billion solar power plant at Hidden Hills, saying it needed to redesign the Inyo County project and the delay would lead to financial uncertainty. With the project nearing final stages of approval from the California Energy Commission, BrightSource considered adding power storage to the 500-megawatt facility. But doing so would trigger another round of time-consuming and costly engineering and environmental analyses.

In what executives now call a "fundamentally changed" solar industry, thin-film panel maker First Solar Inc. is closing down factories and cutting 2,000 workers. The layoffs represent 30% of the Tempe, Ariz.-based company's global workforce. First Solar is also planning to close down a factory in Frankfurt, Germany, later this year while indefinitely idling four production lines at its facility in Kulim, Malaysia, on May 1. The workforce reductions, which will cost First Solar up to $70 million in severance, will also reach employees in the U.S. The scale-back is expected to save the solar giant as much as $60 million this year and then up to $120 million a year after.

Chevron Corp. on Monday will unveil a solar oil field project that has been hit by cost overruns and delays but serves as a showcase for the technology of Chevron-backed solar thermal company BrightSource Energy. Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said Friday that three of its executives would attend the launch of the "demonstration project" in Coalinga, which is designed to use solar power to create steam to inject into wells to improve the flow of heavy oil. The 65-acre project consists of 7,600 mirrors focusing sunlight on a 327-foot tower.

SolarCity Corp., the developer of rooftop solar power systems whose chairman heads Tesla Motors Inc., is planning an initial public offering. The offering will begin after the Securities & Exchange Commission reviews a draft registration statement the San Mateo, Calif.-based company submitted April 26, according to a statement that didn't say how many shares it plans to sell or at what price. SolarCity is seeking to go public while other renewable- energy companies are abandoning their IPO plans.

When it comes to attracting business to California's eastern deserts, Inyo County is none too choosy. Since the 19th century the sparsely populated county has worked to attract industries shunned by others, including gold, tungsten and salt mining. The message: Your business may be messy, but if you plan to hire our residents, the welcome mat is out. So the county grew giddy last year as it began to consider hosting a huge, clean industry. BrightSource Energy, developer of the proposed $2.7-billion Hidden Hills solar power plant 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles, promised a bounty of jobs and a windfall in tax receipts.

SolarCity Corp. expanded the size of its highly anticipated initial public offering but knocked down the share price in what analysts said was a bid to boost investor demand. The San Mateo company said in a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to sell 11.4 million shares at $8 apiece. That values the company, which is one of the country's largest providers and installers of residential and commercial solar power generating systems, at about $584.6 million.

When it comes to attracting business to California's eastern deserts, Inyo County is none too choosy. Since the 19th century the sparsely populated county has worked to attract industries shunned by others, including gold, tungsten and salt mining. The message: Your business may be messy, but if you plan to hire our residents, the welcome mat is out. So the county grew giddy last year as it began to consider hosting a huge, clean industry. BrightSource Energy, developer of the proposed $2.7-billion Hidden Hills solar power plant 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles, promised a bounty of jobs and a windfall in tax receipts.

The Obama administration unveiled plans Tuesday to ramp up solar energy production, offering incentives for solar developers to cluster projects on 285,000 acres of federal land in the western U.S and opening an additional 19 million acres of the Mojave Desert for new power plants. The long-awaited plan also appears to rewind previous land-use decisions by the federal government. The pending policy rules out a long list of environmentally sensitive lands where the government - seeking to fast-track construction - had allowed solar development over the objections of environmentalists.

At what temperature might a songbird vaporize? Will the glare from five square miles of mirrors create a distraction for highway drivers? Can plumes of superheated air create enough turbulence to flip a small airplane? What happens if one of the Air Force's heat-seeking missiles confuses a solar power plant with a military training target? No one knows for sure. But as the state and federal government push hard to build solar energy plants across the Mojave Desert -- there are more than 100 solar applications pending -- the military, birders, aviation officials and others are eager for answers.

SolarCity Corp., the developer of rooftop solar power systems whose chairman heads Tesla Motors Inc., is planning an initial public offering. The offering will begin after the Securities & Exchange Commission reviews a draft registration statement the San Mateo, Calif.-based company submitted April 26, according to a statement that didn't say how many shares it plans to sell or at what price. SolarCity is seeking to go public while other renewable- energy companies are abandoning their IPO plans.

SAN JOSE — Federal spending on clean technologies is drying up, with little sign of additional help coming from Congress, according to a report. As a result, more clean-tech companies are likely to go bankrupt or be consolidated, according to the study released Wednesday by the Brookings Institution and the Oakland-based Breakthrough Institute. In 2009, federal spending on renewable sources of energy reached an all-time high of $44 billion as one-time stimulus funding, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, pumped additional millions of dollars into clean technologies, according to the study.

Las Vegas-bound travelers nearing the Nevada border rarely take notice of the vast, empty stretch of the Mojave Desert surrounding them. But that may soon change. On Wednesday, ground is to be broken for a massive solar thermal plant spanning about 3,600 acres and involving 346,000 mirrors, each about the size of a billboard. Not only will the plant be highly visible to travelers on I-15, it also will be closely watched ? and probably copied ? by solar developers. Many developers are angling to start their solar projects by the end of the year, when a federal program that could cover up to 30% of the construction costs is due to expire.

Stepping gingerly across a small mesa of manganese-stained stones, Alfredo Acosta Figueroa explained how the giant image of the creator etched into the earth guides the souls of mothers and children west toward Old Woman Mountain. The image of Cicimiti, more detectable from the sky than on foot, is just one of many geoglyphs, Native American burial sites and ancient relics that Figueroa says are threatened by solar projects being fast-tracked near Blythe and other remote expanses in the Southern California desert.

In what executives now call a "fundamentally changed" solar industry, thin-film panel maker First Solar Inc. is closing down factories and cutting 2,000 workers. The layoffs represent 30% of the Tempe, Ariz.-based company's global workforce. First Solar is also planning to close down a factory in Frankfurt, Germany, later this year while indefinitely idling four production lines at its facility in Kulim, Malaysia, on May 1. The workforce reductions, which will cost First Solar up to $70 million in severance, will also reach employees in the U.S. The scale-back is expected to save the solar giant as much as $60 million this year and then up to $120 million a year after.

SAN JOSE — Solar thermal start-up BrightSource Energy has shelved its plans for an initial public offering amid a turbulent stock market, a challenging year for solar energy companies and tepid interest from investors. The Oakland company said late Wednesday that it had decided not to pursue its IPO because of "adverse market conditions" and intended to withdraw the S-1 registration document on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "While we received significant interest from potential investors, the continued market and economic volatility are not optimal conditions for an IPO," Chief Executive John Woolard said in a statement.