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WORLD-GENERATION NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
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NEW YORK, NY - DuPont installed a
548 kilowatt solar power project on a
former Superfund landfill site in Newport,
DE. It will generate 729,000 kilowatt hours
annually, reducing greenhouse gas
emissions by 350 tons a year. The Newport
project, developed by Tangent, is owned
by Greenwood Energy, a subsidiary of
Libra Group. The solar panels were
supplied by DuPont Apollo, a wholly-
owned subsidiary of DuPont. Greenwood
receives revenues from a 20 year power
purchase agreement. DuPont receives
yearly payments through a 20-year solar
land lease. The wildlife habitat at the
landfill was enhanced, establishing three
pollinator meadows and installing bird
boxes at ten locations.
Since the Newport, DE installation in
2013, DuPont has supported five more
solar projects on current or former DuPont
property. These installations were in
France, the Philippines, China and two in
the US for a total of nearly 30 additional
MWs. In August 2015, DuPont
commissioned a 1 MW installation on the
Hay Road Landfill in EdgeMoor, DE, its
second solar project on landfill. DuPont is
in the process of signing a lease for a solar
farm on one of its manufacturing locations
in North Carolina, scheduled to come
online in 2017.
DuPont has been at the forefront of
solar innovation. Beginning in the 1950’s,
DuPont provided the first purified silicon
for the Bell Labs experiment
demonstrating the first solar cell. Today,
DuPont is the leading supplier of specialty
materials to the solar energy industry.
Over the last seven years, DuPont has
introduced more than 110 new Solamet®
pastes designed to boost solar panel power
output. Tedlar® film is the only backsheet
material proven to protect solar panels for
30+ years in all weather conditions. Since
2008, DuPont has been granted nearly 200
PV patents worldwide with 1300 patents
pending.
INITIATIVE OVERVIEW
EPA’s RE-Powering America’s Land
Initiative encourages renewable energy
development on current and former
contaminated lands, landfills, and mine
sites when aligned with community vision.
RE-Powering supports cleanup of
contaminated properties, but does not site
renewable energy. Remediating
contaminated sites and determining their
reuse result from the efforts of a diverse
set of stakeholders. Working in
collaboration with the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL), the
RE-Powering initiative has propelled
renewable energy development on
contaminated lands. RE-Powering
America’s Land Initiative tracked and
prescreened over 80,000 contaminated
landsites covering 43 million acres
representing a combined 1,124 megawatts
of capacity.
Since the initiative’s inception, 179
renewable energy installations in 38 states
have been established (as of June 2016.)
Examples abound in both solar and wind.
SOLAR PROJECTS
GroSolar designed two landfill farms,
Tannery and Marion County. The Tannery
Landfill is 2.8 megawatt DC solar farm
developed, designed and constructed for
the City of Rome, NY. This project was
constructed atop a capped landfill.
GroSolar worked in partnership with the
local utility to manage the installation of
2,400 foot distribution line upgrade.
Tannery produces nearly 40% of the city’s
electrical needs, offsets over 2,300 metric
tons of CO² each year.
GroSolar designed and constructed
the Marion County solar project
combining two environmentally sensitive
sites. 5.2 megawatts were constructed on
a capped landfill and 1.9 megawatts were
constructed on a nearby brownfield, within
the project’s six month schedule. The
project utilized a ballasted racking system
to avoid disturbing the landfill’s cap and
produces nearly 10 million kilowatt hours
of electricity, the equivalent of removing
7,000 tons of CO² from the environment
annually.
OTHER SOLAR EXAMPLES
French’s Landfill, a Superfund site
located in Brick Township, NJ is home to a
6.5 MW solar installation saving $13
million over 15 years, and the Greenfield
Solar Farm, a 2.0MW solar array built on a
landfill in Greenfield, MA, saving
$250,000 in its first year of operation.
WIND PROJECTS
There are a total of 23 wind project
installations (634 MW) on contaminated
lands, landfills, and mine sites. In
Pennsylvania, Stony Creek Wind Farm was
built on top of a reclaimed surface coal
mine, and Highland Wind Farm was built
on top of a reclaimed strip coal mine. The
Casselman wind farm is also on top of an
old coal mining site.
The Steel Winds project in
Lackawana, NY sits on the brownfield site
of a former Bethlehem Steel plant. In
Wyoming, three wind farms were built on a
reclaimed coal mine site: Glenrock,
Glenrock III, and Rolling Hills. In Rhode
Island, the Coventry wind farm is located
on a Superfund site of a former pig farm.
BROWNFIELDS DEFINED
The term “brownfield site” means real
property, the expansion, redevelopment or
reuse which may be complicated by the
presence or potential presence of a
hazardous substance, pollutant, or
contaminant. Cleaning up and reinvesting
in these properties protects the
environment, reduces blight, and takes
development pressures off greenspaces
and working lands. It is estimated that
there are more than 450,000 US
brownfields.
Brownfield grants continue to serve as
the foundation of EPA’s Brownfields
Program.
COVER STORY
TURNING BROWNFIELDS INTO GREENFIELDS
BY DICK FLANAGAN