Connecticut is turning landfills into green infrastructure

Connecticut is embracing an innovative way of turning landfills into green infrastructure: covering them in solar panels. The state has approved or built 29 solar arrays on top of capped landfills, and intends to keep building. 

Ryan Linares, the vice president of land acquisition at Greenskies, a solar energy company that builds solar arrays on Connecticut landfills, said any landfill with five acres of flat land and in close proximity to electrical infrastructure was a viable location for a solar array. Because the state usually prohibits shady trees from growing over landfills due to contamination risks, they often have ample access to sunlight for solar panels.

“One of the benefits that solar developers see in landfills is that they are usually town-owned and have limited opportunities to be sold or put to other productive uses. Companies can also make use of state incentives for the redevelopment of brownfield sites,” Sasha Allen and John Moritz write for CT Mirror.