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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.
"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.
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.