Green Shoots from Brown Fields

Uncle Sam looks to eliminate the biggest hurdle to expanding renewable energy--the need for suitable sites to place commercial-scale wind and solar farms--by reusing hundreds of old mines, landfills and industrial sites















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"It just makes sense to explore using these sites," Raml said. "It eliminates environment concerns. It provides another land base to be able to site these projects on lands that don't have characteristics of undisturbed desert. That's a big benefit."

This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

Scott Streater is an environmental journalist living in Colorado



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  1. 1. sethdayal 11:05 AM 10/12/09

    Be perfect places to build new nuclear plants mass produced at 5 to 10% the cost per baseload kwh of wind and solar. Time and treasure spent on so called "renewables" is utterly wasted as they have no chance of ever getting us off big coal/oil's odious product.

    Germany has already tried it and has given up with a buncha new coal plants under construction.

    www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-energy-gap/

    Unfortunately for Big Oil, a mass conversion of fossil fuels to nukes will put them out of business - and they make ten's of trillions of dollars annual. They fight back dumping millions of dollars into astroturf organizations like Daily Climate and political warchests. Big Oil loves wind and solar - they know none of it will make a dint in their profits.

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  2. 2. Dao 04:51 PM 10/25/09

    Land fills will be mined for surplus items and raw resources in the future. They should be left alone to insure easy access. Building energy generating plants on land fills is somewhat like putting housing developments on premium farm land or rail right-of-ways. It shouldn't be done.

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