This past spring, the U. S. EPA launched its first initiative aimed at encouraging, facilitating and supporting the redevelopment of brownfield sites with renewable energy facilities. The initiative, Siting Renewable Energy on Contaminated Lands and Mining Sites, was launched by the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER), the EPA office with purview over land and materials management activities (see text sidebars in article). Several factors make the technical and economic case more compelling for renewable energy development in general, and their development on brownfield sites, in particular.

For starters, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook 2008 report projects that, by 2030, U.S. electricity production will need to increase by nearly 30 percent to meet growing demand.¹ It’s estimated that this increase in demand is equivalent to the electricity production from more than 320 mid-sized, coal-fired power plants.²

Furthermore, as cities and states across the country become more concerned about the environmental and climate-related impacts of burning fossil fuels, renewable energy technologies will play a greater role in meeting future electricity demand. Currently, wind, solar and biomass supply approximately 2.3 percent of our nation’s electricity.³ While such renewable sources currently make up only a small fraction of energy supply, renewable energy production is expected to increase by more than 70 percent by 2030.⁴

About half of the states have some renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that lays out respective state requirements for obtaining a minimum percentage of its power from renewable energy sources, usually by a certain date. These state-level requirements, along with other regional initiatives, such as the West Coast Global Warming Initiative and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, may also continue to increase the demand for additional renewable energy production.

Meeting this growing demand for renewable energy will require large areas of land on which to place wind and solar farms and biomass facilities throughout the country, and where renewable energy resources are abundant. That’s the key—identifying and using land located in areas with high-quality renewable energy resources. EPA’s renewable energy maps, now available online at www.epa.gov/oswer/ocpa/maps_incentives.htm, provide this link between urban and rural brownfield sites and high-quality renewable energy resources. Incentive sheets for renewable energy development and land redevelopment, which include funding, tax, technical and legal incentives, have also been developed for each state and can be found at the web page, above.

In partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), EPA developed a series of national and state-level maps showing all contaminated properties that are within EPA’s land portfolio, herein referred to as EPA-tracked lands. These lands include Super-fund sites, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) sites, brownfield sites, and abandoned mine lands. Three major renewable energy categories were evaluated for this mapping effort: non-grid connected, community- and utility-scale solar (including photovoltaic and concentrated solar power), wind and biomass. These maps, coupled with the state-specific renewable energy and land redevelopment incentive sheets, offer parties interested in developing renewable energy facilities a first look at where EPA-tracked sites may be available for various levels of renewable ener gy generation. Armed with this information and EPA’s Siting Renewable Energy on Contaminated Lands and Mining Sites initiative, which is designed to facilitate and support such development, stakeholders have a leg up on the search for viable renewable energy development opportunities.

Why develop renewable energy production facilities on EPA-tracked lands? Many such sites offer inherent environmental and economic benefits when it comes to redevelopment with renewable energy facilities. For instance, many EPA-tracked sites have existing electric transmission lines and capacity and other critical infrastructure, such as roads, and are adequately zoned for such development. The avoided new infrastructure capital and zoning costs is likely significant.

Furthermore, whether it is a long-term lease or outright purchase, EPA-tracked lands may have lower overall transaction costs than greenfields due to the relative ease of acquisition of large swaths of land from one or few owners, versus acquisition of greenfields from potentially numerous landowners. Large areas of land are what are needed to site community- and utility-scale wind and solar energy production farms. For example, some mining sites offer thousands of acres of land, and may be situated in areas where the presence of wind and solar structures is less likely to be met with aesthetic opposition. Further, redevelopment of brownfields for “green” energy production can help reduce the stress on undeveloped lands (e.g., greenfields) for construction of new energy facilities, and can provide clean, emission-free energy.

Many of these EPA-tracked lands may be in areas where traditional redevelopment may not be an option because the site may be remote, or may simply be saddled with environmental conditions that are not well-suited for traditional redevelopment such as residential or commercial. Some EPA-tracked sites such as industrial, manufacturing and mining sites, once shut down, may leave surrounding communities with fewer jobs. In contrast, the development, operation and maintenance of renewable energy facilities on these same sites may revive both urban and rural job opportunities.

There are approximately 480,000 sites and almost 15 million acres of potentially contaminated properties across the United States that are tracked by EPA.⁵ Cleanup goals have been achieved and controls put in place to ensure long-term protection for more than 850,000 acres.⁶ This leaves open many potential opportunities to develop renewable energy facilities on these sites. Coordination and partnerships among federal, state, tribal and other government agencies, utilities, the private sector and communities will only help advance renewable energy production.

Since launching the Siting Renewable Energy on Contaminated Lands and Mining Sites initiative, EPA has provided technical, facilitation and financial support for the development of renewable energy projects on contaminated lands and mining sites. In addition to the renewable energy maps and incentive sheets that help make the connections between quality renewable energy resources, potentially available land, and funding, tax, technical and legal incentives, EPA has provided project-specific support, such as financial, engineering and regulatory assistance to the City of Houston for development of a solar energy plant on a 300-acre former landfill near downtown. Similar support has been provided to other projects, as well.

Successful renewable energy development is in no small part due to effective outreach and strong partnerships with interested stakeholders. To that end, the EPA will continue to move forward on both fronts, leveraging ongoing activities within other organizations and agencies such as the Department of Energy’s Brightfields program, and a continued partnership with NREL.

Working with state environmental and energy agencies to optimize coordination on key regulatory issues to facilitate renewable energy development, and adding states’ sites to the portfolio of lands for renewable energy development will only increase the likelihood of achieving the myriad synergies needed to realize a successful renewable energy development project. In that spirit, EPA will continue to coordinate with federal agencies and states to assess the energy development potential of state-tracked contaminated lands, while reaching out to and partnering with private-sector stakeholders interested in renewable energy development across the country.

Rising fossil fuel-based energy prices, coupled with an increased demand for energy diversity and independence, set the stage for our nation to ramp up our renewable energy development. Additionally, the prospect of national climate change legislation, in combination with adequate state and federal incentives, and strong public- and private-sector partnerships that leverage resources, whether it’s land, technology, capital or regulatory know-how, is a recipe for a renewable energy feast that the nation ought not pass up.

Penelope McDaniel is an environmental scientist in EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, Center for Program Analysis. For more information, visit www.epa.gov/oswer/ocpa, or email cleanenergy@epa.gov.

OSWER Land Management

• Land Protection: prevent land from becoming contaminated, promote sustainable development of land, preserve pristine land resources by avoiding greenfield development
  
• Land Revitalization: cleanup and reuse of contaminated land while potentially avoiding the development of greenfields

OSWER Materials Management

• Source reduction means reducing the amount of materials entering the supply stream.
  
• Reuse is the reuse of a product by its original user or someone else.
  
• Recycling is a series of activities that includes collecting recyclable materials that would otherwise by considered waste, sorting and processing into raw materials such as fibers, and manufacturing raw materials into new products.
  
• Energy recovery is the recovery of energy contained in materials.
  
• Disposal means the placement of waste on land or injecting underground.

¹ U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Outlook 2008. Table A8: Electricity Supply, Disposition, Prices, and Emissions. www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/appa.pdf

² Estimated using data from: 1) U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Outlook 2008. Table A8: Electricity Supply, Disposition, Prices, and Emissions. www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/appa.pdf; 2) National Energy Technology Laboratory. Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants. http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf

³ U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration. Renewable and Alternative Fuel, Table 4: 2007 U.S. Electric Net Summer Capacity. www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table4.html

⁴ U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Outlook 2008. Table A8: Electricity Supply, Disposition, Prices, and Emissions. www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/appa.pdf

⁵ U.S. EPA OSWER. Draft Cross-Program Revitalization Measures Report, June 12, 2008.

⁶ U.S. EPA OSWER. Draft Cross-Program Revitalization Measures Report, June 12, 2008.