by jbs063010 g3 — July 5, 2010—The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is currently evaluating contaminated sites for renewable energy potential on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
NREL says that America’s eyesores are often good places to install renewable energy for electric power generation, with wind turbines rising from abandoned toxic industrial sites and solar panels catching rays over contaminated landfills.
The land is cheap, often abandoned, close to such necessary infrastructure as power lines and roads, is often properly zoned, and no other developers are rushing to erect anything on them. Potential sites are culled from the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Superfund and Brownfield sites–and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) sites.
In some cases, the renewable energy apparatus going up is powering the ongoing clean-up efforts at the sites. In other cases, the wind turbine, solar array or hydro power is bringing power to nearby schools, senior centers, offices and cities. That’s most feasible if the site is close enough to transmission wires to tie into the grid.
There are some 11,000 sites in the United States with some past or current environmental contamination problem that may hold potential for renewable energy, according to NREL.
