California’s ambitious Ivanpah Solar Power Facility — a massive concentrated solar thermal plant built in the Mojave Desert — is being shut down after more than a decade of operation. The project, which cost approximately $2.2 billion to construct and featured 173,500 heliostats (computer-controlled mirrors) reflecting sunlight onto three towering receivers, never achieved the energy output it was designed to deliver and struggled with efficiency compared to other solar technologies. Ivanpah was