Best Practices for Siting Solar Photovoltaics on Municipal Solid Waste Landfills, A Study Prepared in Partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency for the RE-Powering America's Land Initiative: Siting Renewable Energy on Potentially Contaminated L

摘要

EPA has screened more than 11,000 potentially contaminated sites and MSW landfills--covering nearly 15 million acres across the United States for suitability to site renewable energy generation facilities, including utility-scale solar. In 1988, before municipal solid waste regulations in 40 CFR 258 were promulgated, there were an estimated 7,924 landfills in the U.S. In 2009, that number dropped to 1,908 landfills. The landfills that closed over the intervening years--plus portions of active landfills with closed cells--represent thousands of acres of real property that may be suitable for siting solar PV. At least one study estimates the area of closed landfills to be hundreds of thousands of acres. As part of the EPA mapping effort, over 1,600 of the country's landfills have been pre-screened for renewable energy potential.