Then, an unexpected opportunity to reclaim the land presented itself. In 2020, the municipally owned company that runs Antigonish’s utility and those of two other Nova Scotia towns set out to develop three community solar projects for each of the three towns it manages. The residents of Antigonish hope to make their town one of Canada’s first net-zero communities, including with community solar. But to get the project off the ground, they needed space – and the idea of a solar farm offered the chance to give the former landfill new life. 

Since January, the Antigonish Community Solar Garden has been producing 1.65 megawatts of power for residents and businesses, providing roughly 4% of the town’s energy needs (another 40% comes from wind). It’s just one of dozens of projects across Canada that are using brownfield sites – land contaminated by past commercial or industry use, such as landfills, oil refineries and gas stations – to host solar farms. 

In a net-zero world, vast amounts of power will need to come from wind and sun. But real estate is a bottleneck: to phase out oil and gas, panels and turbines need somewhere to go. Ideally, this land needs to be located near existing roads, communities and grid infrastructure – exactly the kind of land that’s in demand for other uses. 

European non-profit the Renewables Grid Initiative estimates that to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the EU will need to allocate roughly 100,000 square kilometres to renewable-energy generation and grid expansion – an area roughly the size of Iceland. A 2021 paper published in Nature Scientific Reports estimated that to provide 25% to 80% of the electricity mix in some parts of the globe, solar energy would need 0.5% to 5% of total land in those areas. And that has communities like Antigonish going to the old dump for spare land. 

Such projects hold the promise of repurposing lands that meet many of the requirements for renewable power generation, while not being suitable for any other purpose. But as the Antigonish experience shows, they can also be unexpectedly complex, with issues ranging from unstable footing to unhappy residents. “It’s like buying an old house that you’re going to renovate . . . You open the floor and you’ve found that, you’ve found this,” says Antigonish Mayor Sean Cameron. “That’s the kind of the thing we fell into with this one.”

These are the kind of complexities that have turned brownfields into an albatross around the neck of many communities, as governments struggle to deal with the toxic legacy of contaminated sites; in Canada alone, there are tens of thousands of brownfield sites, and the cost of cleaning them up can exceed the value of the land. But with land at an increasing premium and the deadline to shift off fossil fuels approaching, interest in repurposing those sites for renewable energy is growing. Has a brighter future for brownfields arrived?

A tailor-made solution

The concept of “brightfields” – as brownfields used to generate renewable power are known – originates in the United States. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Brightfields Initiative, aimed at helping communities turn former toxic sites into solar energy producers. By 2010, a seminal study in Michigan found that existing brownfield sites could provide 43% of the state’s residential electricity consumption. “They said, for sites that are either heavily contaminated or the market can’t address them, why don’t we put solar panels on them as an interim use or permanent use,” says Christopher de Sousa, professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University and head of a research lab looking at brownfield reclamation. 

De Sousa says these early initiatives established a blueprint, and not just through large-scale efforts; small projects, such as the 3.7-acre, 425-kilowatt solar garden built at the site of a former gas works in Brockton, Massachusetts, also helped set a new paradigm. Nearly every closed landfill in Massachusetts is now a brightfield, and there are more than 600 brightfield projects scattered across the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to run a program called RE-Powering America’s Land, promoting the redevelopment of brownfields for renewable energy.  

Solar is one of the most approachable uses for brownfields; unlike wind turbines, panels don’t require digging deep into the ground, which could disturb hazardous material. Solar farms also don’t expose people to contaminants the way that residential developments or parks would, de Sousa says.

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But while Canada has a federal strategy for contaminated sites, the repurposing of brownfield sites for renewable energy has lagged behind other jurisdictions. A 2016 paper by de Sousa estimated that there were only about 30 brightfields in the country.

Meggen Janes, executive director of the Canadian Brownfields Network, says that’s changed in the last five years, as the conversation about converting brownfields to brightfield projects has accelerated, putting sites that can’t easily be developed for housing or parkland to use. 

This includes an initiative in Alberta, where a company called RenuWell Energy Solutions has conducted a pilot project to turn abandoned wells and oil and gas infrastructure on farmland in the southern half of the province into a 1.45-megawatt solar project across two sites. Because the approach uses existing roads and power lines, it can offer power from small-scale solar at close to the cost of very large sites. Meanwhile, it addresses an existing environmental liability by mitigating the expensive process of closing down old wells; much of the expense of remediating a well site is from removing access roads and revegetating the area, neither of which are required if it’s used for solar.

This significantly reduced the cleanup bill facing the Orphan Well Association (whose coffers are significantly short of the money needed for well cleanups): costs were 80% less than they would otherwise have been, says Keith Hirsche, founder and president of RenuWell. Hirsche says using brownfields for solar is not only cost-effective; it also reduces carbon emissions. “You’re basically [removing] both the energy that it would take to clean that stuff completely up, and then also the energy it would take to put new stuff down . . . across the board, I think it’s a helpful solution.”

RenuWell is now looking to scale up, including with provincial support to build a 20-site grid-scale pilot for solar plus storage, though the company is facing inertia caused by political divides and entrenched interests, including the legacy energy sector. Still, with abandoned oil and gas infrastructure covering at least 340,000 acres in the province, Hirsche says there’s significant room to grow. “This only can impact 10% of [sites] maybe, but . . . if you converted 10% of these abandoned gas sites, you meet almost the projected growth of power demand for the next 10 years in Alberta.”

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No smooth sailing

In Antigonish, the goal for brownfields is more modest.

Unlike most communities in the province, Antigonish owns its own electrical utility. This allows the community more autonomy in setting clean energy targets, and the town has the ambitious goal of producing 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. To help with this, the town’s plan was initially to build a 2.1-megawatt solar garden that would expand access to solar for the town’s residents, including those without the means for their own rooftop solar. 

But landfills are among the most challenging types of brownfield sites to develop, and that proved true in Antigonish’s case as well. Because the site was a former landfill, it didn’t provide stable footing, which meant less of the available area was suitable for panels than planned. The town then had to clear some forest to create more space, causing runoff and increasing tensions with some residents. Grid connection was also pricey. The dumpsite was outside of the town, so the municipality had to pay to run power lines to the site, which cost around half a million dollars. “There was a bunch of issues that kind of snowballed,” Mayor Cameron says.

In the end, the solar garden took two years and $2 million more than anticipated – but Cameron says he would still consider brightfield projects in the future, especially on a less complicated site. “If we get more funding, I would certainly explore another solar garden.”

Remediation and reparation

These kinds of issues can drive developers away from brownfield sites. But brightfield projects have an additional benefit working in their favour: righting wrongs done to marginalized communities.

In 2019, the Tŝilhqot’in Nation celebrated the opening of a 1.5-gigawatt solar farm at the site of a former sawmill. It is the first 100% Indigenous-owned solar farm in Canada, on the first such timber mill to be redeveloped as a solar farm.

Since then, other Indigenous communities have seized similar opportunities, including in the Northwest Territories, where an Indigenous-owned business has developed a one-megawatt solar farm on a former brownfield site in Inuvik, and in Nova Scotia, where two Mi’kmaq Nations have partnered with a local municipality to develop a seven-megawatt solar garden at the site of a capped landfill. 

Christopher de Sousa says that because of the legacy of environmental racism, where polluting activities were located near marginalized communities, many brownfield sites are now located on Indigenous land. In some parts of the country, Indigenous communities are also more reliant on diesel and other forms of fuel, making renewable energy on brownfields especially appealing. 

For these communities, de Sousa says, brightfields offer the possibility of remediating contaminated sites, switching to cleaner energy and creating jobs and revenue – projects that have the potential to be “win-win-win.”

Incentives incoming

Across the country, advocates say the primary barrier to accessing these wins is financial. “You know, why am I going to invest time and effort into developing a site that might take . . . a million dollars to clean up,” de Sousa says, “when right next door I have a clean one?” 

This is less an issue for large centres, where land is at enough of a premium that developing a brownfield is worth the cost and risk. Meggen Janes says that small communities, by contrast, often struggle to find the resources to deal with brownfield sites. “I’ve talked with many mayors across the country, and they’re trying to find programs . . . that would support their initiatives.” 

Still, local governments can also be leaders; in Calgary, where two solar farms recently opened on contaminated sites that had been used by a fertilizer company, the city has created a program to incentivize brownfield redevelopment for wind and solar with a reduction in municipal taxes. And in Nova Scotia, a new provincial program that aims to create 100 megawatts of community solar is prioritizing projects located on brownfields.

Ultimately, Janes says, the potential of brownfield sites is vast. In Europe and North America, there are an estimated 3.5 million brownfield sites, making a significant source of developable land. 

In this respect, crises can serve a useful function. The affordable-housing crisis has prompted some Canadian municipalities to focus on brownfield sites for affordable housing. After another summer of droughts, fires and floods, the climate crisis may serve as the motivator to turn polluted sites into the engines of a more sustainable future.  

Moira Donovan is an independent journalist based in Nova Scotia, specializing in the environment and climate change. 

The post A ray of light for brownfields appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Winds are even higher and more consistent offshore, where average wind speeds are some of the highest and most consistent in the world. Recognizing the potential for power generation, the Atlantic provinces are now making ambitious plans for offshore wind development. Nova Scotia aims to offer leases for five gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, and Newfoundland and Labrador recently announced legislation to develop the offshore wind sector.

In June, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston went even further, proposing a megaproject, dubbed “Wind West,” to develop 40 gigawatts worth of offshore wind-generated electricity — enough to provide 27% of Canada’s power.

The path to making those plans real is anything but straightforward, however. Getting offshore turbines deployed will require significant upgrades to transmission infrastructure, as well as ongoing work to ensure the buy-in of groups like the fishing industry, which has been leery of offshore wind. But provincial leaders in Atlantic Canada say this is their opportunity to lose – and that they intend to seize the moment that’s blown in.

A strong case for offshore wind development

The case for offshore wind development in the Maritimes stands on one main pillar: the region’s uniquely strong winds. As in, off-the-charts powerful. At up to 11 metres per second, average annual wind speeds exceed the highest category in the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s offshore wind classification scheme, says Nathaniel Pearre, researcher in the renewable-energy storage lab at Dalhousie University. These significant wind resources create an economic advantage, Pearre says, translating to more energy from the turbines and more return on investment.

Another key plank in the case for offshore wind in Atlantic Canada is the broad continental shelf on which to build, with water depths in many places that are just 25 to 40 metres, which is well within the range for fixed-bottom turbines. This accommodating undersea geography creates an easier pathway for wind projects than in British Columbia, for example, where the ocean floor drops off close to shore. Floating turbines are an emerging alternative but for now are significantly more expensive to build.

Taken all together, the region’s advantageous conditions – its geography, amount of real estate and abundant wind resource – create “the potential to have relatively low levelized cost of energy [from] offshore wind, and a lot of it,” Pearre says.

The opportunities and challenges for exporting wind energy

For Nova Scotia, where demand for electricity is higher in the winter, and where nearly half of electricity still comes from coal, offshore wind has the potential to be particularly useful, since winds are also higher in the winter months. But even five gigawatts of wind, as Nova Scotia intends to start offering leases for, is roughly twice what the province needs to supply its own population.

That leaves export, says Elisa Obermann, executive director of Marine Renewables Canada: “It’s definitely feasible to develop and construct those [offshore wind] projects; the main question that we have is just around what/where is the market for the offshore wind electricity.”

Proximity to New England – where states facing cancelled offshore wind projects may soon be scrambling to fill a 30 gigawatt hole in their supply of green energy – offers potential customers, as do other Canadian provinces.

The challenge with export is that Nova Scotia is nearly an island, and not just geographically. The transmission cable linking the province to New Brunswick is just 300 megawatts, so even one offshore wind farm would likely overwhelm its capacity. Subsea cables could allow the province to export to New England, though such cables are expensive. For Nova Scotia to provide Canada with significant offshore wind energy, it would need to upgrade its transmission link to the rest of the country.

Scott Urquhart, co-founder and CEO of Aegir Insights, an international consulting firm based in Denmark, points out that exporting power requires agreements from other provinces, as well as U.S. states, which can take years to acquire. And while the export case may be strengthened by the pause on offshore wind projects in the northeastern United States, which could face a power crisis by the 2030s, the sector would ultimately be better served by a robust industry on both sides of the border, Urquhart says.

Still, there’s reason for hope, not least that Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act, could allow governments to fast-track necessary transmission upgrades, a priority identified by the Atlantic premiers at a first ministers’ meeting in June. The premiers have pitched an Eastern Energy Partnership to export wind and hydro power to Western Canada and New England, which would come with an $8-billion price tag for transmission improvements.

A swinging pendulum for wind energy

The last several years have not been kind to the wind-power sector. Inflation, supply chain issues and shifting political winds have prompted companies to cancel projects, including plans for a 2.5 gigawatt wind farm off the U.K. coast by Danish giant Ørsted.

But like all resource industries, offshore wind swings from crisis to growth, according to Urquhart, and there’s reason to think now is a good time to start new projects. The International Energy Agency has forecasted that wind-power capacity will double between 2024 and 2030 compared to the previous six years, with offshore wind driving the growth. “It’s hopefully at the start of another pendulum swing,” Urquhart says.

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Even if seabed leases start being issued for offshore wind this year, Urquhart says it would be at least a decade before farms are operational, “and that’s 10 years if you don’t have major stakeholder conflicts and constraints.”

The risk of conflict is not negligible. There are widespread fears that turbines could displace activity in other sectors, such as shipping and fishing.

But Nathaniel Pearre says the regional assessment on offshore wind, which recommended against turbines within 25 kilometres of land and in almost all fishing areas, was excessively deferential to those fears. The proposed regulation would reduce the available space for ground-mounted turbines and increase the cost. “The further you transmit [energy], the more the price goes up.”

Either way, Canada’s offshore wind has potential but still a long way to go – and the conversation is just getting started.

Moira Donovan is an independent journalist based in Nova Scotia, specializing in the environment and climate change. Her written work has been published in Hakai Magazine, The Narwhal and The Economist, and her radio work has been broadcast on CBC Radio.

The post Offshore wind development is gaining momentum in Atlantic Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.