Canadian mining companies are looking to contaminated former extraction sites as locations for generating renewable energy from wind and solar farms, CBC News reports.
The leading example is in southeastern British Columbia, where the city of Kimberley operates a small, one-megawatt solar generating facility on part a former lead-zinc mine operated by Teck Resources Ltd.
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Walking through the solar field, “you wouldn’t know you’re hiking above an old mining site,” CBC reports. “Solar panels fill the landscape, like 96 sunflowers tracking the sun.” The facility produces enough electricity to power about 200 homes, “but there is enough land to expand to 200 megawatts in the future, more than enough to power Kimberley, which has about 7,000 people, and surrounding communities.”
The project has caught the eye of mining companies interested in repurposing old sites and generating revenue, even on land that is contaminated. “As long as there are plenty of sunny days—or, in the case of wind farms, strong winds—a company has an opportunity to recoup some of the expense of cleaning up a mine, which can cost tens of millions of dollars,” notes reporter Kyle Bakx. In Teck’s case, it cost $70 million to clean up the former Sullivan mine—including $2 million that went to the Kimberley solar project, along with the land it required.
“I think specifically in Alberta, where there are a number of [otherwise unsuitable] brownfield sites and they don’t have the hydroelectric potential that British Columbia has, I could see this taking off,” said Kimberley city administrator Scott Sommerville.
Calgary consultant Meghan Harris-Ngae, who advises North American resource companies for Ernst & Young, said turning old extraction sites into renewable energy projects “strikes the balance between environmental and economic benefit.”
Looking deeper, Clean Energy Canada Policy Director Dan Woynillowicz saw a bit of circle-closing going on. Photovoltaic solar generation requires a basket of exotic minerals. Fourteen of the 19 most common are found in Canada, but the supply chain for those substances traces back to a mine.
“I think most people don’t recognize that there is a relationship between solar panels and other clean energy technology, and the metals and minerals that are required for those technologies, and the fact that we have to be mining those out of the earth,” Woynillowicz said.
