Abstract |
EPA is committed to empowering states, communities, and other stakeholders to work together in a timely manner to assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse contaminated lands. In 2008, EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER) launched the RE-Powering America's Land: Siting Renewable Energy on Potentially Contaminated Land and Mine Sites Initiative (RE-Powering Initiative) to facilitate the use of potentially contaminated sites for renewable energy generation when it is aligned with the community's vision for the site. For this report, potentially contaminated land includes sites where contamination is suspected but has not been confirmed and sites where contamination has been identified. Through the RE-Powering Initiative, EPA identified and mapped more than 11,000 potentially contaminated sites-and nearly 15 million acres that have potential for developing solar, wind, biomass and geothermal facilities. Together, the sites contain an estimated one million megawatts (MW) of renewable energy generation potential-enough to power 1.5 to 2.5 million homes annually. This Handbook is intended for EPA, other federal, local, and state cleanup project managers; communities, property owners, developers, and others with an interest in reusing potentially contaminated sites for renewable energy production. This Handbook provides tools to help interested parties determine the overall feasibility of siting renewable energy production and some key considerations for integrating renewable energy development during all phases of typical cleanup processes (e.g., during the environmental assessment, cleanup plan, or cleanup implementation) in the EPA Superfund, Brownfields, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Corrective Action programs. |