RE-Powering: Want to Learn More
On this page:
- Interested in Learning More about RE-Powering? The RE-Power Training Page is a Great Place to Start.
- Want to Review a Past RE-Powering Webinar?
- Where Can You Find RE-Powering Sites? Check Out the Tracking Matrix.
- What are Some Benefits of Actual RE-Powering Sites?
- What is the Value of Community Solar?
- Interested in Sustainability? Review the Critical Infrastructure Study
Interested in Learning More about RE-Powering? The RE-Power Training Page is a Great Place to Start.
RE-Powering has been developing training to support successful renewable projects on contaminated lands, landfills and mine sites. These trainings walk through some of the more complex portions of siting renewable energy on contaminated lands. The following trainings are available.
- Land Use Considerations Training Module
- Interconnection and Electricity Sales Training Module
- Addressing Community Concerns
- Project Development – Building the Team
- Using NREL’s PV Watts® Calculator to Calculate Economic Feasibility
Want to Review a Past RE-Powering Webinar?
EPA hosts webinars to help stakeholders explore development of renewable energy resources on formerly contaminated lands. The webinars highlight EPA resources; feature presentations by renewable energy and land redevelopment experts; and share examples of successful projects, programs and policies.
Where Can You Find RE-Powering Sites? Check Out the Tracking Matrix
Using publicly available information, RE-Powering maintains a list of completed renewable energy installations on contaminated sites and landfills. The locations of these installations reflect evolving market trends generally linked to available renewable energy resource, Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), net-metering laws, and other incentives. The RE-Powering Tracking Matrix provides summary statistics of known installations and discusses emerging trends.
What are Some Benefits of Actual RE-Powering Sites?
Using publicly available information, RE-Powering maintains a list of economic and environmental benefits reported by communities and developers associated with renewable energy projects on contaminated lands. Communities across the country are creating jobs and stimulating economic growth by developing these sites. Common benefits reported include revenues from land leases and taxes, electricity cost savings associated with the reduced need to purchase power from the grid, job creation, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
What is the Value of Community Solar?
Community solar programs offer the economic and environmental benefits of solar to the 49% of Americans without traditional solar access, either because of physical, ownership or financial limitations.
RE-Powering sites represent a large and varied collection of sites that do not generally have on-site electricity load to serve following cleanup.
The discussion paper below links the need for solar access and the mechanism of community solar to the opportunity of using formerly contaminated lands, landfills and mine sites for renewable energy:
Interested in Sustainability? Review the Critical Infrastructure Study
Extreme weather events and natural hazards that can cause long-term power outages for critical infrastructure also create vulnerabilities for renewable energy installations. Location and building standards and best practices should be applied to protect renewable energy installations. Renewable energy in combination with a decentralized electricity grid can make communities more resilient.
To demonstrate how RE-Powering projects could be a part of a community’s energy resiliency portfolio, RE-Powering developed a methodology that can be used to evaluate the potential for RE-Powering sites to support critical infrastructure assets, including in emergency situations, and to identify specific EPA-screened sites with the best potential for supporting wastewater treatment infrastructure.
The study evaluated over 80,000 RE-Powering sites and nearly 17,000 wastewater infrastructure units. This methodology can be applied at national or local scales to other infrastructure (e.g., hospitals, schools, emergency centers, cell towers, fire stations, natural gas distribution centers, and others) if needs information can be calculated.