Treasuring Your Trash – Landfill Solar

Some capped landfills and brownfields can produce limited amounts of methane gas in the first few years of settling, but after that, they’re often times written off as unusable land. Today, these sites are being considered for solar projects because they are usually close to existing infrastructure, are properly zoned, flat, wide-open spaces, and there’s little commercial development demand for them.  

For municipal leaders, state and federal governments, environmentalists and solar professionals, there’s been an across the board consensus that solar is arguably the best technology to deploy on America’s landfills, but the development process is riddled with hurdles.

This discussion will cover the key elements to consider when identifying landfill sites appropriate for solar. Using case studies from over 3.5 MW of landfill projects already constructed, this presentation will cover site specifications, permitting (see learning objectives), timing, location, and 3^rd party environmental impact studies. Landfill solar projects can take a long time to develop without the proper understanding of the requirements imposed at the federal, state, municipal, and host party levels, and this talk hopes to shorten the development cycle moving forward by sharing best practices, and lessons learned.