EPA To Reuse Toxic Sites For Renewable Energy 183
Hugh Pickens writes:"The Daily Climate reports that President Obama and Congress are pushing to identify thousands of contaminated landfills and abandoned mines — 'brownfields' that could be repurposed to house wind farms, solar arrays, and geothermal power plants. Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. 'In the next decade there's going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,' said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society. 'We don't want to see these industrial facilities placed on land that's pristine. We love the idea of brownfields for renewable energy development because it relieves the (development) pressure on undisturbed places. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable for wind and solar power development, as well as biomass. Included are 5 million acres suitable for photovoltaic or concentrated solar power development, and 500,000 acres for wind power. These sites, if fully developed, have the potential to produce 950,000 megawatts — more than the country's total power needs in 2007, according to EPA data."
cool (Score:1, Interesting)
cool
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Interesting)
Cleanup bill (Score:1, Interesting)
Do the clean, renewable energy project get to pick up the bill for the clean up? What about the long term liability for contamination remaining after the clean up? In the long term, is there any increased risk of illness, like cancer, to the employees of the renewable energy projects? I'm sure these issues can be easily addressed to ensure that no liability is passed onto these projects. I didn't see them discussed in the article and admit being too lazy to research the EPA site for answers...
Re:I think it's a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Yes, it's a great idea.
2) PLEASE do not call it "brownfields."
We don't need doublespeak. It's a good idea, don't hide it behind some useless term like "brownfield."
Call it a "contaminated site," people can get behind that. Don't create more battles for yourselves, and don't give your "opponents" words they can throw back at you.
But most definitely, do it.
Re:Won't be all of 'em though. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like it could make a heck of a foundation for a solar concentrator mirror array...
As long as we aren't dodging the issue of leakage (Score:4, Interesting)
Building on top of a brownfield might do little to stop its contents from percolating into groundwater. (Actually, it might do something at that, simply by diverting rain that would otherwise fall onto and into it.)
I'm all for putting otherwise-unusable land to good use, but we'd need to have legal structures to protect everyone involved, so (for example) the company building the energy installation isn't suddenly on the hook for everything lurking under it.
Re:How were these determined to be economical (Score:3, Interesting)
One cannot know for certain that a given plan is economic until it is tried, sometimes things go better than forecast, sometimes worse; but that isn't a uniquely public sector problem.
Re:Won't be all of 'em though. (Score:5, Interesting)
If one used the spare power to transmute the nuclear waste into useful non-radioactive materials then it wouldn't be "waste" anymore. The concept that the U.S. is power limited is completely false. A recent PNAS paper showed that the U.S. could supply 14x its *entire* electricity production using only high value wind power sites. Use the extra electricity to transmute the nuclear waste and one of the entire arguments against nuclear power disappears [1]. Then it becomes a simple economic discussion as to whether its better to build remote wind farms and superconducting cables to make the power available at distant cities, or build nuclear reactors closer to the cities where one could take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure. If you want to give a gift to ones children start thinking in terms of "free" green energy.
1. Also worth noting is that either laser or tokamak fusion power might come into the mix over the next decade. But that doesn't minimize the advantages in U.S. jobs and infrastructure that would result from building up wind, tidal & solar generating capacity as well as superconducting transmission infrastructure. What is required is to break the coal, oil & gas monopoly mindset. If its taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere it is *not* sustainable. Not unless your definition of "sustainable" involves killing off a lot of species and a fair number of humans.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Superfund (Score:3, Interesting)
If effect, the Obama admistration is trying to take some things that are nearly, or in some cases absolutely, hopeless, and turn them to good.
If you want to look at how "cleanup" has progressed at superfund sites, you can. The information is available on the net. Be prepared for a very depressing day.
Re:I think it's a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a technical term that sets off the property rights wingnuts. These are the "it's my property and I can do whatever I want to it, even if it causes cancer for 10,000 years" people. Those people often are behind fixing "contaminated sites" but when they hear brownfield, they picture someone spilling 8oz of diesel in their strip mall parking lot and having to pay $15,000,000 to tear out the parking lot, remove 20ft of topsoil and then replace the parking lot... and pay lawyers.
Re:Superfund (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Interesting)
Superfund site cleanup already typically includes protective clothing, i.e. bunny suits and respirators effective against organic solvents and heavy metals. You can buy the bunny suits (made of tyvek) for about $8 apiece, galoshes are about $30 per wearer and can be rewashed, respirators are $20 and last about three to six months. This is a totally solved problem, and you are ignorantly or maliciously spreading FUD. Either way, stop. You're only making an ignorant ass of yourself.
If we slide much further towards another depression, we might see some of these projects carried out as public works. It is in the interest of national defense to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.