Recent reports express concern about the pace at which the industry is transitioning to renewables. The International Energy Agency (IEA), energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7% from 2017, to a high of 33.1 gigatonnes, with coal-fired power plants as the main contributor. The main challenge is time and land reclamation after closing nuclear plants and coal mines takes a lot of it. Globally, the rate of energy transition is much too slow for every country to reach their Paris Agreement goals. On the bright side, solar has stepped in with a quicker solution. Installing solar panels atop ‘brownfield’ sites, can be cheaper than decontaminating the ground for other purposes. “We’re essentially turning these drains on a community into an asset,” said Chad Farrell, chief executive officer of Encore Renewable Energy, a Vermont-based developer that’s contemplating installing solar arrays at coal-ash ponds across Appalachia. Kentucky’s closed Bent Mountain coal mine will be the site of EDF Renewables new solar farm. The site will still require some reclamation work to make it more suitable for solar. Solar has also been established within the nuclear zone of Chernobyl, at a former coal-fired power plant in Canada, and at landfills and other brownfield sites throughout New England. Next year, a modest 3.5-megawatt solar farm in southwest Virginia is slated to replace a mine that closed in 1957. For the solar industry, building at sites of former power plants and some legacy mines is an opportunity to tap into existing grid infrastructure.
Recent developments like these should improve the rate of energy transition. What other sites present opportunities to increase renewables and lower emissions? What else can be done to meet Paris Agreement goals on time?