Ohio clean energy projects under an Inflation Reduction Act grant announced last month show how solar sited on closed landfills can reduce greenhouse gases, improve resilience and provide funding for other environmental goals.

Part of the $129.4 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will add 28 megawatts of solar generation to a county central services facility and four former landfill sites in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. A bigger chunk of the funding will bring 35 MW of solar and 10 MW of battery storage to a brownfield site in Painesville in Lake County, which will let the city close a coal-fired peaker plant that dates back to 1908.

Representatives of the Cleveland, Painesville and Cuyahoga County governments, along with the EPA and others, met July 26 at Cuyahoga County’s 4 MW solar array in Brooklyn, Ohio, to discuss the grant and the work. Funding from the EPA grant will more than double the generation capacity of that landfill solar site, which has been in operation since 2018.

“In Northeast Ohio we’re going to see warmer, wetter, wilder weather in this region. And we have to do our part to address climate change,” said Mike Foley, director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County.

Funded projects under the grant are expected to eliminate the equivalent of 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over a 25-year period, with the largest cuts coming from deploying the solar projects in Cuyahoga County, Cleveland and Painesville, according to Valerie Katz, deputy director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County. 

The biggest chunk of grant money will go to Painesville, which is in Lake County east of Cleveland. But the 28 MW of solar generation to be built in Cuyahoga County will have a big impact.

“This will triple our solar capacity in Cuyahoga County in the next five years,” Katz said.

The landfill and brownfield projects funded by the grant will do more than produce electricity. By avoiding pollution from fossil fuels, they’ll provide health and environmental benefits. They’ll also produce revenue.

Some of the revenue from the brownfield solar site in Painesville will fund natural habitat for pollinators, birds and other wildlife elsewhere on that site. The city plans to work with the West Creek Conservancy for that and other projects, including building public trails and creating access for fishing.

Cuyahoga County also plans to use revenue from its sites to deploy more solar, Katz said. The added solar, in turn, can help develop microgrids to boost resiliency.

Making landfill solar work

While closed landfills provide plenty of open space, they also are often capped by membranes made from clay or other materials that cannot be damaged without risking environmental harm.

Solar arrays at these sites are feasible thanks to ballast systems, which have been fairly common for such uses for more than a decade. Huge concrete blocks anchor the solar array’s racks and panels. The blocks, or ballasts, support the array and protect it from wind. 

“They’re not going through the cap, which works out great for us,” said Jarnal Singh, an environmental supervisor with Ohio EPA’s Twinsburg office in its division of materials and waste management.

Without holes in the cap, the solar array doesn’t provide a pathway for methane or other gases to escape from the landfill. Leaving the cap intact also avoids creating a pathway for water to get in and percolate through the waste. That liquid, called leachate, could pollute groundwater if it’s not collected and treated properly.

Ohio has 141 landfill sites that have been subject to the state’s post-closure care requirements, according to Anthony Chenault, the Ohio EPA’s media coordinator for its Central, Northeast and Southeast districts. The agency has approved four landfills for solar development so far and has had informal discussions about several more sites.

But other practical considerations and site-specific features control whether any particular landfill is suitable for solar development.

“Some factors that could determine viability of a solar installation include proximity to existing power lines, size of the landfill, condition of the landfill cover, ownership (public vs private), and accessibility for equipment and maintenance,” Chenault said via email.

A few years should have passed since a landfill was closed and capped, so some settlement and off-gassing has already taken place, said Scott Ameduri, president of Enerlogics Networks, which was the primary developer for the Cuyahoga County solar site. There also must be a financially sound owner willing to accept responsibility for the waste at the site, he said.

Just as importantly, the electricity will need somewhere to go and a way to get there.

“In Brooklyn, for example, we were fortunate that Cleveland Public Power is a municipal utility,” Ameduri said. Municipal utilities are generally more flexible about making arrangements to take and distribute power than investor-owned utilities, he noted. Community solar legislation, such as House Bill 197, could help change things on that front, he added.

Another option is to have a large off-taker for the electricity adjacent to or near the landfill. The 7 MW of new grant-funded solar power to be built on a landfill south of the IX Center in Cuyahoga County can go to the expo center or the nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Ameduri said. The general area is also under consideration for one of the Cuyahoga County utility’s microgrids.

Otherwise, a landfill solar project putting electricity onto the grid may require a go-ahead from the regional grid operator, which is PJM for Ohio. The process takes roughly three to five years and adds extra costs. “I’d rather spread that over a 100-MW project than I would for a smaller brownfield site,” Ameduri said.

For now, Cleveland, Painesville and Cuyahoga County are celebrating the EPA grant award.

“This investment will allow us right here in Cleveland to turn brownfields into bright fields,” said Mayor Justin Bibb.

Inflation Reduction Act grant gives landfill solar a boost in Ohio is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Companies have a smoother road for getting management to greenlight clean energy projects now than they did five years ago, thanks to corporate climate commitments, federal incentives and more.

And if last month’s turnout of more than 800 people for the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s sustainability summit is any guide, businesses want support and guidance on navigating a process that is more compelling yet also more complex than it was years ago. The Jan. 23 program drew twice as many attendees as last year’s inaugural event.

Sustainability “is a major market trend at this point. It’s a massive market opportunity,” said Baiju Shah, president and chief executive officer for the Greater Cleveland Partnership, which is one of the United States’ largest metropolitan chambers of commerce. At the same time, sustainability is crucial if businesses want to stay competitive in a global marketplace, he said.

Roughly a third of the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s largest member companies have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050, according to Emily Keller, GCP’s manager of sustainability initiatives. And, she added, practically all member companies have committed to some environmental sustainability practices.

Those pledges and goals have an impact when it comes to getting the green light for clean energy projects, especially when companies report on their progress towards environmental, social and governance objectives.

“Explaining an energy efficiency project [to management] or even being able to get a renewable energy project across the finish line five years ago was much different than what it is today,” said Rebecca Karason, the environment and sustainability director for Huntington National Bank. Decisions on three solar arrays for the company were based on economic factors, but a good part of the decision also hinged on the company’s renewable energy commitment, she said.

Ideally, clean energy projects add to businesses’ bottom lines.

“At its core, the development and the analysis of these projects is no different than any other capital project, but it is a complicated process,” said Gino Scipione, whose practice with Cohen & Company centers on compliance and financial reporting.

For any project, “you have to be able to prove at its core that it’s going to return value,” Scipione said. Most projects are capital expenditures, so for accounting purposes they get capitalized and depreciated over time, instead of being treated as an expense for a single year. How much comes from equity versus debt financing affects the calculations, too.

Beyond the general tax considerations that enter into any business deal, companies should also consider if a project can qualify for tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy incentives, Scipione noted. Those reductions in tax liability reduce the total cost for a project. And larger tax credits are available if projects are located in disinvested or energy communities and satisfy other requirements. In some cases, there also may be an opportunity to sell renewable energy credits, or RECs, which can provide income to further offset costs.

All of that, for example, means a company can see savings sooner from an investment in solar energy compared to the costs of otherwise purchasing electricity from the grid.

“The amount of money that I’ve seen in the last two years coming from the federal government is really helping,” said Rishabh Bahel, Nestlé’s manager of energy and sustainability for North America, who is based in Solon, Ohio. The company has announced it plans to power all its operations sites with renewable electricity by 2025, and one of its strategies has been investing in solar farms.

If a project meets enough requirements for the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits, “essentially you can get 40 to 50% paid by the government,” Bahel said. “So you have to make sure you’re looking at all the incentives and plans available in the market.”

Energy efficiency is another big emphasis for Nestlé.

“Any time you’re saving energy, you’re saving money,” Bahel said.

Those energy savings cut the costs of production and support the business case for the investment. In contrast, if companies merely pay for carbon offsets, “that really doesn’t have any payback,” he said.

Businesses in disinvested neighborhoods also need the economics of clean energy projects to work, because a company with too much debt won’t succeed, said Michael Jeans, CEO of Growth Opportunity Partners and its GO Green Energy Fund. He and others at Growth Opps often guide companies through the financing process and provide advice to help them make projects succeed.

Transparency and reporting

Even as financial incentives boost the business case for clean energy investments, companies also face added compliance requirements for reporting greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s sort of a carrot and stick,” said Kaitlin Bergan, head of sustainable client solutions for BlackRock’s U.S., Canadian and Latin American team, as she reported on overall trends in industry.

In 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued proposed rules for publicly traded companies to report on climate risks and their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. The rule will likely be finalized sometime this spring. The European Union already has adopted reporting requirements for some companies. And as Karason sees it, reporting requirements will trickle down even to smaller companies.

Reporting requirements can be a challenge, especially if different customers need data reported in different formats, said attorney Richik Sarkar, Dinsmore & Shohl’s ESG equity partner in Cleveland. Yet as sustainability managers do that, he suggested they also should think about how to explain projects to their companies’ financial officers.

So, Sarkar challenged: “How do you make the business case and explain to them it’s not only a matter of doing good, but it’s a matter of doing well?” 

To be sure, not all companies are moving ahead on clean energy projects. About 50 attendees walked out during Bergan’s talk, as a protest against BlackRock’s continuing investments in fossil fuels. And last week, FirstEnergy reneged on its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030. 

Craig Ickler is an energy democracy organizer for Cleveland Owns, which was among the groups organizing the protest. With BlackRock being an exception, Ickler felt the Greater Cleveland Partnership is “talking about sustainability seriously.” He also wants more involvement of local neighborhoods in energy projects and decisions. “My focus is as much on removing fossil fuels from the energy equation as it is about who’s going to own those clean energy assets and who’s going to benefit from them,” he said.

Emily Bacha, vice president of public affairs for the Ohio Environmental Council, also attended the Jan. 23 conference. She said she saw “real momentum to push forward equity in climate and sustainability strategies” — something she wouldn’t have expected ten years ago.

Now Bacha and others will be watching to see what further strides companies make. “It’s important that we’re not just talking the talk, but walking the walk across all sectors,” she said.

Cleveland summit spotlights growing corporate interest in clean energy projects is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.