Green energy crusaders vociferously deny that their campaign to banish fossil fuels has driven up energy costs. But the latest twist involving a solar power plant on the Nevada border highlights the disdain with which progressive activists hold utility ratepayers.

The Ivanpah solar plant in California, just across the Nevada line near Primm, came online with much fanfare in 2014, heralded as the future for American energy production. While private investment contributed to some of the $2.2 billion cost, federal taxpayers were on the hook for a $1.6 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. Operators also received a generous federal tax credit and a grant from the U.S. Treasury.

But the plant was an immediate disappointment. The Associated Press reported in 2014 that Ivanpah was producing only “about half its expected output.” Many environmentalists also blanched to learn that this monument to green dreams doubled as a prolific executioner of avian wildlife — the plant’s massive field of mirrors directed sunlight to tall towers, zapping as many as 6,000 birds a year. In addition, Ivanpah wasn’t as green as advertised. The Riverside Press Enterprise reported that the plant had to use far more natural gas than projected to be a reliable source of energy and was characterized as a polluter under California’s cap-and-trade program.

But the economics of technological innovation turned out to be a much larger hurdle to success. Ivanpah generated concentrated solar power, which eventually became much more expensive than photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly to power. This meant that Ivanpah eventually couldn’t compete with cheaper renewable power sources.

As a result, California’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas &Electric, reached a deal this year to terminate its contract with Ivanpah — which runs through 2039 — as a means of saving ratepayers money in a state with some of the country’s highest electricity costs. California Edison planned to do the same. This led Ivanpah operators to prepare for the shutdown of two of its three towers because of declining demand, likely meaning the closure of the plant after just 11 years.

Or not. This month, California regulators blocked PG&E’s effort to end its relationship with Ivanpah. In essence, the state — led by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — is now forcing state ratepayers to continue to subsidize an obsolete plant under the guise that closing Ivanpah would result in the loss of “sunk infrastructure costs.” Talk about throwing good money after bad.

This will, of course, further drive up electricity costs in the name of preserving a not-so-green solar power plant that has been bleeding money for a decade. PG&E notes that it can meet California’s renewable energy portfolio standards without purchasing Ivanpah’s power, and an independent arbiter agreed, MSN reported. Yet state regulators still prefer to force taxpayers to purchase electricity at bloated prices to ensure no interruption in their green virtue signaling.

“One reason California electric rates are the second highest in the country after Hawaii is that regulators impose mandates with little regard to cost,” The Wall Street Journal editorialized, calling California’s move an example of “putting the ideology of imminent climate apocalypse above common sense.”

Birds aren’t the only incineration victims out in the Mojave Desert near Primm. California utility users will also get fried by the decision to keep open this heavily subsidized monument to the inadequacies of government central planning.