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EPA To Reuse Toxic Sites For Renewable Energy
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."
They're putting the windmills in post-cleanup, big boy. Sites have to be cleaned up, but people don't necessarily want to build on them. This is using the sites after they've been cleaned.
The reality a whole bunch of polluted land not really suitable for wind or solar farms
Except ya know: "National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable". I think the whole, "economically suitable" thing means it is... economically suitable for solar and wind.
These brown sites will by nature of them be farther way from existing infrastructure resulting in higher costs to send both materials and labor to the location.
Precisely the opposite. If you RTFM, you'll see that the listed benefits include: power transmission lines are often already available on site (leftover from the site's previous use), and the sites are often located in areas with depressed economies (read: readily available labor from nearby towns, that used to be employed by the old site)
Also there will need to be extra safety precatuions taken for the labourers and the waste from the zones.
I think they are limiting their scope to sites where the pollution has been cleaned up to minimally acceptable levels.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
In about 500 years when they run out, sure, we will all be dead. But you fail to see that technology is always improving. While the parent is correct in saying that in 2009 renewable energy is not economically feasible, but by mixing together independently developed technology from other disciplines, in 30 more years it may be very feasible, all without wasting taxpayer money in a black hole of waste. The government has already put in as much funds as it needs because the seeds have already been planted. Commercial space travel and commercial space satellites will increase the demand for more efficient solar panels, this will lead to more privatized and focused research and in time lower cost and higher yield. Just look at computers, even though governments planted the seeds for development, it was the private sector that made them affordable, reliable and useful.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"brownfield" is not doublespeak-- it's a technical term. It means "a site that is contaminated but that has potential for redevelopment." This is to distinguish it from sites that are highly toxic and/or not re-developable.
Most of the brownfields, by their very definitions, are either in or close to suburbia. Basically, by putting up wind, Solar PV|thermal, or possibly geo-thermal, these will generate power CLOSE to consumption. In addition, many of these sites already had high tension lines being brought in. Generally, a brownfield was a previous manufacturing site that used loads of electricity. So, with high tension lines already there, the increased costs of build-out as well as maintenance may be far less than doing a new site located 20-50 miles away.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Brownfield is a very common term in plant engineering, and it seems to be used the same way here, not as some form of doublespeak. Basically:
Brownfield - new facility on existing site
vs.
Greenfield - new facility on new site
You misspelled "insignificantly small chunks". And we've already taken out not-quite-as-insignificantly small chunks by building billions of houses.
Every method of energy production has an environmental impact. That is a red herring. A useful discussion will center around which set of environmental impacts can be most easily tolerated.
The fact no one will seriously be able to challenge the site selection on environmental grounds will simply speed getting the shovels into the ground.
You should look into the rehabilitation of contaminated sites before stating anything quite so strongly. The undesirability of contaminated land can make it environmentally valuable and worth protecting. Environmental grounds for legal argument aren't nearly as limited as you're pretending.
Number of deaths in the US from Commercial nuclear accidents: 0
Number of deaths from the bursting of a molasses storage tank in Boston: 21
Anything can blowup and kill your family.