It is Pennsylvania’s priority to preserve agricultural land, forest land, and other valuable habitats located within the state. As such, it may be beneficial to install grid-scale solar in areas like abandoned mine land, operating mine lands, brownfield sites, landfills, and other remediated sites that are available for development. However, there are limited regulations and policies in place to guide developers and designers to deploy and construct grid-scale solar facilities on the aforementioned sites.
The goal of this project is to identify challenges associated with siting grid-scale solar facilities and identify factors that lead to the successful deployment of solar projects on abandoned mine lands throughout the state. Consequently, the investigation will help develop actionable recommendations to improve the site discovery process involved while gaining a better understanding of the roles that different stakeholders play. When complete, the project will identify how all these factors are linked together for a more streamlined review and development process.