Developer Building Solar Generation on Old Coal Mines, Brownfields

---

Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--If you own an industrial brownfield--especially an abandoned coal mine, and particularly if it is located in Appalachia--Carey Kling wants to talk to you.

Kling, director of business development for BQ Energy LLC (Wappingers Falls, New York), said her company is "really interested in placing solar generation on closed coal mines in Appalachia." She spoke at a break-out session February 28 during the annual conference of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME) (Englewood, Colorado). BQ Energy recently agreed to be acquired by clean energy developer CleanCapital Holdings Incorporated (New York, New York).

"We really like land that has no other use and that we don't have to pay a lot for," she told conference attendees.

BQ Energy, a 21-year-old renewable energy developer, is focused exclusively on developing solar generation on landfills and brownfield sites. It has a portfolio of about 100 megawatts (MW) of operating solar generation projects in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and Texas.

But it plans to bring on "a couple hundred MW" of solar projects by the end of 2024. Beyond that, it has "several hundred" MWs of projects in various stages of development, she told Industrial Info in an interview after her talk.

The company develops utility-scale solar (20 MW or more) as well as distributed solar (less than 20 MW).

In 2024, it plans to bring a 50-MW solar project online in Ohio at a reclaimed coal mine owned by American Electric Power Company (NASDAQ:AEP) (Columbus, Ohio). Elsewhere in the Buckeye State, BQ Energy is developing a 100-MW project on a reclaimed surface mine in Nottingham. That project also is projected to begin generating electricity in 2024. Two 20-MW solar projects are slated to go online in Talen, Pennsylvania, in 2024 on the site of coal ash basins, she said. And another 40 MW of solar projects are being developed in southwestern Virginia's coal country.

BQ Energy is developing larger-scale projects in Texas, New Mexico and Montana, she told the SME conference attendees.

"Mine sites are great for solar economics," Kling told attendees. Typically, they have existing electrical infrastructure, as well as roads and other infrastructure, so those are costs that BQ Energy does not need to incur. Since the site was zoned for industrial use, no zoning changes need to take place for a solar generation project. Mines have a lot of surface land. Slag piles, landfill sites and tailings ponds all make great solar sites, she said, and they don't have a lot of competing uses.

Best of all, she said, "regulators love renewable energy projects built at brownfield sites."

The U.S. has no shortage of closed coal mines and landfills, she added.

Building solar generation at a mine site can create a stream of value to the landowner, including long-term lease payments for land that has no other use, she said. There may be reclamation benefits that can be claimed, as well as counting the generation toward corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.

If the local utility or community doesn't need solar generation, Kling suggested striking a purchase-power agreement with any of the many American businesses trying to operate more sustainably, including Amazon.com Incorporated (NASDAQ:AMZN) (Seattle, Washington), Meta Platforms Incorporated (NASDAQ:META) (Menlo Park, California) or Alphabet Incorporated (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (Mountain View, California).

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).