Brownfields are properties that are abandoned or underutilized because of actual or perceived contamination. Whether the contamination is real or perceived, the redevelopment of these properties tends to be difficult and complex.

In many cases brownfields are the ecological remains of an abandoned industrial effort. They can be small scale (e.g. the case of a neighborhood gas station) or large scale (e.g. where a large scale factory once stood.

Large scale urban redevelopment efforts can sometimes turn what will be abandoned factory land into high density living. This is very expensive but can be done, as in the case of Atlanta:

In most urban areas, planning exercises now identifies potential brownfield sites for redevelopment. Below are two examples:

Baltimore MD

So the issue now becomes, how to best make a brownfield, GREEN?

A simple idea, but one that has not yet been implemented (but certainly would fit the intent of the new stimulus package), is to put PV panels on these abandon urban tracts.

One of the principal advantages to this lies in ready access to grid infrastructure in many of these locations as large factories once stood there.

Currently brownfields are producing new value to any city so why not just cover them with PV cells?

Google Earth Exercise:

PVs in Urban Brownfields.

Brown fields are former industrial wastelands that now exist as barren/toxic soil repositories.

We will examine and measure some brownfield PV potential in the Urban Areas.

Download the worksheet for this exercise

Procedure:

1. Randomly select some urban area in the US that you might think would have a large scale brownfield.

2. Identify the brownfield and try to estimate how many square meters is involved.

3. Find 6 such brownfields in the US in various urban locations and enter in this information into the worksheet.

Below are two examples of the kinds of things your looking for and how they would appear in Google Earth (basically there are no buildings on the land and it would be located in a generally industrialized area).

Example 1: 39 55 29 -75 12 20 (this is very large scale)

Example 2: 34 1 17 -118 13 40 (more typical scale)

Also feel free to use Eugene as it has a couple of good candidates - see if you can find them.

For reference:

In the summer, at any Urban Location in the US, about 1 square KM of PV will produce 100 Mega Watts of electrical power so this is potentially a big deal.