Benefits Matrix
Across the United States, communities are generating revenue, realizing energy cost savings, and creating jobs when redeveloping formerly contaminated sites with renewable energy projects. Community goals such as meeting a local clean energy objective, cleaning up a former brownfield, or protecting greenspace may stimulate action on a project. EPA, through its RE-Powering America’s Land Initiative (RE-Powering Initiative), maintains a list of economic and environmental benefits that have been publicly 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 restoring and developing these sites.
If you are considering developing a renewable energy project in your community, the information presented here can be used to educate stakeholders on the benefits of redeveloping formerly contaminated sites. EPA’s RE-Powering Initiative has compiled the latest benefits based on publicly available information, including fact sheets, case studies and other resources that provide information on over 500 projects across the country.
- Nearly 14% of projects report job creation. For example, a project in California supported 341 jobs and partnered with a job training program to educate and employ local residents in a variety of positions related to solar installation.
- The RE-Powering Initiative has identified benefits associated with 491 renewable energy projects on contaminated land installations currently documented in the RE-Powering Tracking Matrix.
- The March 2024 Benefits Matrix Site List of projects details the community benefits resulting from hundreds of renewable energy projects nationwide, including wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. This list can be used by communities and stakeholders to: 1) help locate similar projects in specific geographic areas, and 2) cross-reference site benefit information with additional information in the November 2023 Tracking Matrix.
Siting renewable energy projects on contaminated properties provide many potential environmental and economic benefits. Through reuse of these sites, communities can transform a vacant or underutilized property into a facility that may help improve the local tax base, create jobs, and turn blight into an economic opportunity. This approach reuses the land while turning a potential liability into an asset that can benefit the community for decades. Publicly available, stakeholder-reported information indicates that communities, private site-owners, and consumers have saved millions of dollars in energy costs, created construction jobs, and received new property tax revenue as a result of reusing these sites for renewable energy.
Renewable energy projects developed and maintained on contaminated land provide economic and environmental benefits, including energy cost savings, revenue generation, GHG reductions or a combination. While all RE-Powering sites provide benefits, identifying and quantifying those benefits relies on publicly available information. The underlying sources or methods used to determine quantitative benefits (either estimated or achieved) may not be readily available or clearly reported. Sources used to populate this document include publicly available EPA resources (e.g., fact sheets, case studies) or public statements made by parties directly involved with a project (e.g., town, site owner, developer, utility, federal agency).
The benefits reported and documented in the matrix may have been calculated using a variety of methods and/or expressed in different units. Consequently, a cumulative expression of the total benefits achieved by renewable energy projects on contaminated lands is not possible from publicly available sources. In addition, the specific benefits of each project can vary due to several factors, including electricity prices, site clean-up status, incentives, policies (e.g., renewable portfolio standards), development costs, availability of transmission and infrastructure, and renewable energy technology type and capacity.
Many projects report multiple benefits for a single installation. For example, the Dexter Street Solar installation in East Providence, Rhode Island: 1) generates energy credits for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, 2) provides annual energy cost savings that exceed $250,000, 3) creates a new source of tax revenue from underused property, 4) offsets millions of pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, and 5) produces dozens of job opportunities. Commonly reported benefits from renewable energy on contaminated lands 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. Although not comprehensive of all realized benefits, the following chart illustrates the types of benefits stakeholders have publicized as a measure of success for 491 installations.
Examples of Sites with Benefits
Superfund Redevelopment Program
The EPA’s Superfund Redevelopment Program (SRP) has helped communities reclaim and reuse thousands of acres of formerly contaminated land. Through tools, partnerships, and technical assistance, the SRP provides local communities with new opportunities to grow and prosper. Each Superfund site holds reuse potential waiting to be realized. Superfund sites can be well suited for energy production. Sites are often near utilities and transportation networks that help keep development costs low.
The SRP tracks alternative energy at Superfunds sites and recently released the report, Alternative Energy Projects at Superfund Sites: Status Update and Highlights from Across the Country (December 2023). Nationwide, there are over 96 Superfund sites in planned or actual alternative energy reuse; several of these sites are also using renewable energy technologies as part of green remediation strategies for site cleanups. SRP can help communities reclaim and reuse contaminated lands for a wide range of purposes, including alternative and renewable energy.
Benefit Successes
Here are a few examples of some of the economic benefits realized through this type of development:
Scituate Landfill
This former 29-acre municipal solid waste landfill is now home to a 3-MW solar PV system that was constructed using only local labor and will produce 3.825 million kilowatt-hours of clean energy per year. The town leases the property to the renewable energy developer for $1 per year and expects $200,000 in annual savings from its ability to receive credit for the power sent to the grid (net metering). The town also received assurance by maintaining the option to cancel the entire contract if the project remained incomplete as of an agreed-upon deadline. The developer has also partnered with town officials and school personnel to develop and implement a solar curriculum for K-12 students in the town. In combination with a nearby wind turbine (not on contaminated land), the landfill solar installation provides Scituate with 100% of its municipal power needs from renewable sources.
Apache Powder
Despite the small 1.4 kW capacity of this combined solar and wind installation, its economic benefit is still significant. Combined, the solar and wind systems power ongoing groundwater clean-up activities at this former chemicals and explosives manufacturing Superfund site. The renewable energy systems reduce the 30-year clean-up cost from $25 million to approximately $2.5 million. The overall cost of the solar system and windmill pump was three times less expensive than the cost to run power lines and pay for electricity at remote areas of the 1,100-acre site. This installation demonstrates the value in using renewable energy for remediation on contaminated sites, particularly when power is needed in areas that are removed from grid infrastructure.
Bethlehem Steel Winds
This 35-MW wind installation on a former steel production site in Lackawanna, NY, took land that had been idle for 20 years and returned it to productive use. Manufacturing activities left the 1,600-acre location contaminated with steel slag and industrial waste, but it was cleaned up pursuant to RCRA corrective action. In the early 2000s, changes in New York State law provided financial and legal incentives to investigate and remediate contaminated sites and return them to productive use. At the same time, the University of Buffalo published a study identifying the waterfront surrounding the Bethlehem Steel site as a potential location for wind energy, which generated interest from developers. Because of the wind installation, a 30-acre tract of the site now provides approximately $190,000 in annual tax revenues for local communities and school districts. The two-phase wind installation also created a total of 140 construction jobs and five permanent jobs in an area with high unemployment.
Brick Township Landfill
The 42-acre Brick Township Landfill Superfund site lies between the Garden State Parkway and Sally Ike Road in New Jersey. The Township and the solar developer entered into a redevelopment agreement in 2011. The following year, the solar developer made a $2.5 million lease payment in advance to the Township for the 15-year lease of the site—a vital source of revenue for the Township that contributed to overall project success.
In October 2014, the 7-MW solar facility was completed. By May 2015, the solar facility had generated 3 million kilowatt-hours of power, offsetting carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to 60,000 trees. The solar project provides all the electricity needed by the Township government, with excess electricity sold back to the grid. When the 15-year lease ends, the Township will assume ownership of the solar field, providing free electricity to the Township and an annual cost savings of $500,000 to $600,000. Allowing for the solar panels’ decreased efficiency over time, the panels will still provide more than 3.5 MW in 15 years’ time, enough to supply the municipal government with all of their electricity needs.
Reilly Tar & Chemical
The 10.8-MW Maywood Solar Farm covers 43 acres of the Reilly Tar & Chemical (Indianapolis Plant) Superfund site. The developer estimates that the electricity generated will offset 13,235 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, equivalent to the annual carbon produced for energy use in more than 1,800 residential homes. The total cost of the project was about $30 million and approximately $4 to $6 million of that amount was invested in the local economy in the form of labor, construction costs and materials. The project created nearly 100 jobs during construction and will continue to have a positive impact on the economy through ongoing contracts with local firms for equipment and labor that will be required throughout the facility’s 15-to-35-year operating period.
Dayton Tech Town
Located in a mixed-use area in downtown Dayton, Ohio, Dayton Tech Town is now a premier technology-oriented business campus. The Creative Technology Accelerator (CTA), one of three buildings located in Tech Town within the formerly contaminated GM Harrison Radiator complex, was designed as a sustainable facility that includes a geothermal heating and cooling system. The site is being remediated under an agreement between the Ohio EPA Voluntary Action Program (VAP) and U.S. EPA’s RCRA Corrective Action Program. The geothermal system combined with sustainable building practices will reduce annual energy usage by approximately 300,000 kilowatt-hours and result in cost savings that exceed $66,000.