KCET

Renewable energy enthusiasts concerned about damage to habitat from renewable energy development have been saying for a few years that there's plenty of disturbed and damaged land on which we could be building our solar and wind facilities instead. And now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is backing them up.

The EPA, through its Repowering America's Lands initiative, has been diligently cataloguing parcels of land that are damaged, contaminated, or otherwise without much ecological value, but potentially suitable for renewable energy development [such as utility-scale solar power]. With help from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), they've put their California sites database into map form as the just-launched Renewable Energy Siting Tool, with 11,000-plus sites listed in a map layer viewable with Google Earth.