The growing trend of turning old landfills into clean energy
CLEVELAND — Operations at the landfill in Brooklyn, Ohio, stopped in 2010 after the facility reached its capacity.
What You Need To Know
- A $129 million grant is helping convert landfills and old industrial sites in the Greater Cleveland area into solar farms
- Landfills that have been closed and capped cannot be used for much due to health and environment restrictions
- The grant is helping expand the solar farm built in 2018 on the Brooklyn Landfill
Since then, it’s been closed and capped, with vents put in place for the methane created by the decomposing waste.
“There isn’t a whole lot you can do with landfills,” said Kurt Princic, a senior development manager for CEP Renewables.
“These landfills generate methane gas, so you really don’t want to have any occupied structures or really even have people in these landfills to avoid any potential risks,” Princic said.
The landfill found new purpose in 2018 with the construction of a 17-acre solar farm built on part of it, utilizing land where not much else could be built.
Princic explained that there are some challenges to building solar farms on landfills; builders can’t drill or grade the land, so the panels are attached to ballasts.
According to Princic, these factors make the construction costs for these projects higher than similar projects that aren’t located on capped landfills. CEP currently has projects on five landfill sites and six brownfield sites.
“We are one of the few companies in the country to do that. We pride ourselves on that,” Princic said.
CEP Renewables now has a plan to expand the solar farm on the Brooklyn closed landfill.
“The highest and best use oftentimes is putting solar on them,” Princic said.
The planned expansion would increase the Brooklyn Landfill solar farm’s output from 4 megawatts to 10 megawatts. That’s enough to power roughly 2,000 homes for an entire year.
“For a long time, Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland have been looking for solutions to legacy landfills in communities,” said Jenita McGowan, the deputy chief of Climate and Sustainability for Cuyahoga County.
McGowan says Cuyahoga County has identified several landfill and brownfield sites for solar development. Brownfields are areas that were formerly used for industrial purposes and often need to be cleaned before they’re developed.
“The practice of solar brownfield development has been growing in the United States for the past decade or more,” McGowan said.
With the help of a $129 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency received last year, Cuyahoga is expanding the amount of solar power put on landfill and brownfield sites.
There are plans to build a solar farm that would power a microgrid in the City of Euclid, the City of Painesville plans to build a 35 megawatt solar farm on a former landfill site and Cleveland has plans to develop solar farms on two landfills within the city.
The grant plans to fund the creation of solar projects that will produce a total of 60 megawatts of energy in Cuyahoga County.
In addition to funding solar projects, the grant also allocates money to hold classes that teach workers the skills needed to build solar projects.
“We think solar energy is an important part of managing growing electricity demand,” McGowan said.
Princic says that CEP Renewables will build the expanded solar site, but it will be run by Cuyahoga County, and the energy will go to Cleveland Public Power at a discounted rate.
“Part of what we are trying to do with this program is help bring those energy costs down,” McGowan said.
These projects transform formerly vacant land into something productive.
“It really takes what are environmental liabilities and turns them into assets,” McGowan said.