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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."
We're talking billions of tons of contaminated soil, water, radioactive waste, old landfills. What do you propose is done with it? Where is it going to go when they "clean it up"? Personally, I love this idea. Renewable energy, and using otherwise unusable resources? I don't see what's not to like.
1) Yes, it's a great idea.
2) PLEASE do not call it "brownfields."
We don't need doublespeak. It's a good idea, don't hide it behind some useless term like "brownfield."
Call it a "contaminated site," people can get behind that. Don't create more battles for yourselves, and don't give your "opponents" words they can throw back at you.
But most definitely, do it.
Building on top of a brownfield might do little to stop its contents from percolating into groundwater. (Actually, it might do something at that, simply by diverting rain that would otherwise fall onto and into it.)
I'm all for putting otherwise-unusable land to good use, but we'd need to have legal structures to protect everyone involved, so (for example) the company building the energy installation isn't suddenly on the hook for everything lurking under it.
If one used the spare power to transmute the nuclear waste into useful non-radioactive materials then it wouldn't be "waste" anymore. The concept that the U.S. is power limited is completely false. A recent PNAS paper showed that the U.S. could supply 14x its *entire* electricity production using only high value wind power sites. Use the extra electricity to transmute the nuclear waste and one of the entire arguments against nuclear power disappears [1]. Then it becomes a simple economic discussion as to whether its better to build remote wind farms and superconducting cables to make the power available at distant cities, or build nuclear reactors closer to the cities where one could take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure. If you want to give a gift to ones children start thinking in terms of "free" green energy.
1. Also worth noting is that either laser or tokamak fusion power might come into the mix over the next decade. But that doesn't minimize the advantages in U.S. jobs and infrastructure that would result from building up wind, tidal & solar generating capacity as well as superconducting transmission infrastructure. What is required is to break the coal, oil & gas monopoly mindset. If its taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere it is *not* sustainable. Not unless your definition of "sustainable" involves killing off a lot of species and a fair number of humans.
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There's a big difference between getting them to a "pristine state" and merely getting them to be non-carcinogenic though. I really wouldn't mind the latter.
Superfund site cleanup already typically includes protective clothing, i.e. bunny suits and respirators effective against organic solvents and heavy metals. You can buy the bunny suits (made of tyvek) for about $8 apiece, galoshes are about $30 per wearer and can be rewashed, respirators are $20 and last about three to six months. This is a totally solved problem, and you are ignorantly or maliciously spreading FUD. Either way, stop. You're only making an ignorant ass of yourself.
If we slide much further towards another depression, we might see some of these projects carried out as public works. It is in the interest of national defense to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"