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Positive Trend: Making Brownfields Green, Waste Clean

by Laura DiMugno | 11:38 am June 24th, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Categories: Adaptation, Business, Clean Tech, Renewable Energy, Solar
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Companies in the renewable-energy and clean tech arena are pioneers in leading the world into a cleaner future. But they can’t do anything to change the dirty past. Right?

Wrong. Many of these green companies are not only setting the world on a lower-emissions course, but are actually cleaning the mess left by decades of ruthless contamination.

Solar companies, in particular, have been active in this space. For instance, many project developers are interested in siting their installations on former landfill sites. Although these locations are chosen for practical – rather than symbolic – reasons, solar adds a green hue to these once-filthy sites.

Solar developer PVNavigator, for instance, just signed an agreement to study the possibility of building a photovoltaic facility on a former landfill site in San Bernardino County, Calif.

Likewise, electric utility Western Massachusetts Electric Co. has already completed a large solar installation on a contaminated brownfield site in Pittsfield, Mass., that would otherwise be unsuitable for any other type of development, and the company is pursuing similar projects in the area. (For more details on the Silver Lake solar project, check out my article in the January 2011 issue of Solar Industry.)

Some of these companies are going as far as to decontaminate sites, with the help of federal and state governments.

groSolar also chose a landfill site for one of its solar projects, which will be used to power a pump and treat system to decontaminate groundwater in New Jersey. On the federal level, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doled out funds for an electrical resistance heating system to clean up pesticide-contaminated sites in California, and all of the power used in the decontamination system will be offset by a solar project located on the site itself.

No, we can’t erase the mistakes of our polluted past. But perhaps more of these double-duty projects can put us on a faster track to a cleaner future.

Visit Laura DiMugno’s original article in the Keep It Green blog.

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One Response to “Positive Trend: Making Brownfields Green, Waste Clean”


  1. On October 9th, 2011 at 5:54 pm Gene Doherty Said:

    In our rush to switch to renewable energy we must not forget the broader reason we are doing it, to minimize the effects climate change is having on our environment. It hurts us if we destroy more of our environment in our quest for renewable energy.

    Thus this trend that Laura DiMugno’s conveys is an important trend that needs to become adopted everywhere. With the Department of Energy’s recent loan guarantees for solar plants in the deserts there is a great deal of concern that we are affecting or destroying existing viable habitats before we know enough about them. To the degree that there are existing lands that we have already messed up, then we should be using those lands first before going into virgin landscapes.

    Desert plants have two speeds of growth, very fast and very slow. Very fast occurs as the desert blooms after a rain, and very slow by specialized species that adapted to the conditions. For all of these plants, their reproduction is either very rare or is in a symbiotic relationship with other wildlife, thus the entire cycle of life must be preserved in order for these species to survive.

    Have you ever walked through a desert and seen the dirt roads going on for miles, ever think about when they were made? Or last traveled?
    The one thing we do know about desert plants, they don’t like having their roots compacted.

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