October 1, 2008—In a novel approach to return land to productive use, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified thousands of properties that could potentially host solar, wind, or biomass energy production facilities. EPA pinpointed these energy assets using Google Earth and has listed each property’s attributes for energy redevelopment.
EPA worked with the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to collect information on renewable energy availability across the country, and merged it with EPA’s data from several land cleanup programs. In addition, EPA applied screening criteria including distance from power lines, closeness to roads, and site acreage to identify sites that are good candidates for hosting renewable energy production facilities.
In producing the interactive state maps, EPA used information on properties from several land cleanup programs, including abandoned mine lands and lands under EPA’s Superfund, Brownfields, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act programs.
These properties have varying levels of historic contamination. Contamination at some of these properties has already been addressed, while the level of contamination at others is still to be fully investigated. It is likely that some of the brownfields properties have little historic contamination, says EPA. The appropriate steps to address the contamination at these properties will vary from site to site.
For more information visit EPA’s Renewable Energy on Contaminated Land and Mining Sites Web site.
