What is RE-Powering?
EPA’s RE-Powering America’s Land Initiative encourages renewable energy development on current and formerly contaminated lands, landfills, and mine sites when such development is aligned with the community’s vision for the site. The Initiative identifies the renewable energy potential of these sites and provides other useful resources for communities, developers, industry, state and local governments or anyone interested in reusing these sites for renewable energy development.
Potentially contaminated land includes sites where contamination is suspected but has not been confirmed and sites where contamination has been identified. Targeted sites include brownfields, Superfund sites, sites subject to corrective action under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), mining sites, and landfills.
RE-Powering has facilitated redevelopment efforts to reuse abandoned industrial sites for wind farms and former landfills for solar arrays. These projects generate returns nationwide from Georgia to Massachusetts, New York to California. These projects not only advance cleaner and more cost effective energy technologies and but also reduce the environmental impacts of energy systems.
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What are the Advantages of RE-Powering?
Potentially contaminated land, landfills, and mine sites can offer significant advantages over other sites, such as open space, for renewable energy development. Some of these sites have unique attributes that can lower development costs and shorten development timeframes. Many of these properties can offer developers a unique value proposition for renewable energy deployment and the ability to:
- Leverage existing infrastructure
- Reduce project cycle times through streamlined permitting and zoning
- Improve project economics with reduced land costs and tax incentives
- Gain community support through land revitalization efforts
- Protect open space
