Options are limited when property owners—including federal agencies, state and local governments and private individuals—find themselves with contaminated land on their hands.
Solar panels, like these installed at a contaminated site in Davis, provide a sustainable reuse option for otherwise unusable land and generate clean energy for use on-site and off. A checklist is now available on the EPA website to help visitors evaluate whether a piece of vacant land is a viable renewable energy generation site. US Environmental Protection Agency
By Bill Picture
Published: June, 2012
Options are limited when property owners—including federal agencies, state and local governments and private individuals—find themselves with contaminated land on their hands. Until recently, whether contaminated land got returned to meaningful use was almost solely dictated by the price tag for toxic remediation and access to cleanup funds.
Last month, however, the U.S. Environmental Protection (EPA) and U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) came up with another possible solution: Install solar panels and/or wind turbines on contaminated land to generate clean energy, thereby quickly returning to productive use real estate that had sat idle—in some cases, for over a decade—because it was too costly to clean up and therefore effectively off-limits for either commercial or residential use.
Not only that, the agencies have put into the hands of local communities and landowners the tools and information necessary to evaluate a contaminated site’s renewable energy potential. The "decision trees" that they’ve developed (one for wind and one for solar) and made available via the EPA’s website allow even members of the general public with no real technical expertise to identify sites in their respective communities that could be churning out clean energy instead of just sitting there taking up space.
"The average person can go to our website, look up a contaminated site and go through a checklist of criteria to figure out if this is a viable option," said EPA Region 9 Project Manager Karen Irwin.
The EPA has been tracking 490,000 of these contaminated sites, including former industrial sites and landfills (about 15 million acres altogether)—according to them, that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of land that could be repurposed. The EPA-tracked sites, which are spread out all over the country and range from rural plots of land to urban ones, can be viewed on a Google Earth-powered map available via a link from the EPA site. "There could be a lot more sites," Irwin said.
"Opportunities to install renewable energy systems on vacant properties can be found in every community," said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest, in a written statement. "Tapping sun and wind power at brownfield sites, rooftops, parking lots and abandoned land could provide untapped gigawatts of clean energy."
Eligible or not?
The EPA’s decision trees can be used to evaluate just about any plot of vacant land. That said, Irwin noted that generally in order to produce the amount of clean energy necessary to offset the cost of installing the solar panels and/or wind turbines, a site should be at least two acres.
"But we’ve seen smaller sites used effectively this way, when a group of cities goes in together to finance multiple projects across multiple sites," she added. "The goal in that case would be to collectively generate over 1,000 kilowatts of power."
In many cases, repurposing land in this way is not only cheaper than a cleanup, it’s also safer, because there’s a risk of exposure and further contamination during the remediation process. Pollutants in the contaminated soil can be released into the air when that soil is disturbed. "This limits human exposure and liability concerns," Irwin said.
In that vein, Pennsylvania-based Carlisle Energy Services has come up with a way to generate renewable energy and make sure that nasty pollutants stay where they are. Their Spectro PowerCap is a solar-cell-lined membrane that traps contaminated soil underneath it.
The Spectro Power Cap was recently used by Republic Services, to seal a 45-acre landfill near Atlanta. The cap will generate an estimated one megawatt of clean electricity, enough to meet the needs of 224 homes.
Here at home
The City of Richmond is the first municipality to use the decision trees as part of a pilot program. City officials see in the program the opportunity to both heal the environmental scars left behind by heavy industry—Richmond was the site of WWII’s biggest-producing shipyard, and is still home to a Chevron refinery—and bring much-needed jobs to the local area.
Every site deemed viable for generating renewable energy could mean a shot in the arm of the local economy. And as the demand for solar panels increases, so too will the number of workers needed to manufacture those panels. It’s a win-win for Richmond, which is home to some of the green-tech industry’s major players.
"What Richmond is doing now is using these tools to look across their community at these sites and do a basic inventory of solar/wind potential," Irwin said. "The next step will be to narrow that list down and go, ‘Okay, what are the best sites to start with?’"
Irwin expects that other cities will soon follow Richmond’s example and use the decision trees in their own communities. While she hopes to one day see solar panels and/or wind turbines atop a fair-size chunk of the aforementioned 15 million acres, she believes it’s too early to set an actual goal.
"It’s yet to be seen how these tools will increase or advance renewable energy," she said. "For now, I think it just makes sense to look at the 15 million acres as the preferred alternative to pristine land."
Irwin said she has fielded a lot of inquiries about the decision trees since last month, when the EPA announced that the tools are available on its website, and says that communities with a bigger-picture view of sustainability seem to be the most excited.
"The communities that are looking at it more seriously are the ones like Richmond that are making the connection to local jobs. For them, this is big, big news."
For more information, visit www.epa.gov/renewableenergyland.
Remediation of contaminated soil poses a risk of human exposure, as pollutants can be released into the air when the soil is disturbed. Pennsylvania-based Carlisle Energy Services created this solar-cell-lined membrane, the Spectra PowerCap, that traps contaminated soil underneath it while generating clean energy. It was recently used to cap a 45-acre landfill in Georgia. Carlisle Energy Services
