From 1801 to 1970, the Philadelphia Navy Yard served as a landfill and incinerator, contaminated by shipbuilding and other industrial activities. Since 1970, the area has been largely abandoned, until recently, when the city decided to redevelop the area with a commitment to sustainability, reflecting Mayor Nutter’s goal of establishing the city as the greenest in the nation. Navy Yard is now a mixed-use office, research and industrial park.
One of the most exciting projects in the Navy Yard is the construction of Philadelphia’s largest solar photovoltaic installation, which is scheduled to start this summer. According to developers, the 1.3-megawatt, $5.6 million project on the Navy Yard will create a facility capable of powering 300 homes, and will create 10 permanent jobs and 50 construction jobs.
The EPA’s Re-Powering America’s Land initiative, which is funding the Navy Yard solar project, works to promote and streamline the process of turning contaminated sites into green energy generation sites. According to Lura Matthews of the Re-Powering America’s Land, 11,000 of those brownfield sites, covering 15 million acres, have been at least preliminarily assessed for their green energy potential. The “EPA has estimated that the total technical potential of energy sited on brownfields (not taking into account practical or monetary considerations) is nearly 1 million megawatts. That roughly equals the total existing U.S. electricity generating capacity.”
For the article, please visit: http://e360.yale.edu/feature/brown_to_green_a_new_use_for_blighted_industrial_sites/2419/
To learn more about the EPA’s Re-Powering America’s Land initiative, please visit: http://www.epa.gov/oswercpa/