Agenda - Council Work Session - 04/11/2023

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enough added economic benefit to make a solar project at a brownfield site viable. They have expertise in examining brownfield sites and assisting in understanding issues such as liability, clean-up requirements, and financial incentives. The EPA has also developed its own mapping tool to identify a broad range of energy projects on brownfield sites across the United States. The EPA provided some feedback gleaned from their work across the country looking at solar development on brownfields. First, it appears that state financial incentives have played a key role in the viability of solar development. Second, site characteristics and solar radiance are less important than having sufficient financial support for this development. Third, identifying who will purchase the power and sign a power purchase agreement is critical to successful project development. The EPA works closely with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). NREL has performed detailed analyses of the viability of solar development at specific brownfield sites throughout the United States. The EPA agreed to work with NREL to offer a commitment to reviewing one or more MN CLP sites and their potential for solar development including opportunities and barriers. B3.5 NREL Assessment During discussions with contacts in EPA's Repowering Americas Land program, connections were made with staff at NREL who offered to provide an analysis of the techno-economic viability of a standalone solar PV system for one of M N's CLP sites. MPCA staff chose the Becker site as there has been strong local interest. Meetings were held with Barr Engineering, MPCA, and other members of the team of agency staff working on this study to set the parameters of the study and exchange information needed for the analysis. The results of the NREL study of the Becker site are pending and were not available for use in this study report. B3.6 Interagency Team Meetings The MN EQB organized bi-weekly meetings throughout the course of this study. Participants included MPCA, Mn EQB, Mn MMB, Mn COMM, Met Council, and Barr. Typical agenda items included: criteria, geospatial analysis results, ranking of sites, barriers and opportunities, recommended actions, and conclusions. The issue of GOB restrictions was the subject of a great deal of discussion as this is a very complicated issue and everyone involved was focused on providing an accurate portrayal of the issue and reasonable recommendations. B3.7 Criteria Development Focus Group Meeting Following the development of site criteria and some initial site evaluation and scoring, we held a (full audio) focus group meeting on July 13, 2020 with a subset of participants from the first focus group meetings. We discussed the initial site scoring results. We focused on some key criteria: solar generation potential (nameplate capacity — on the waste footprint, and on the buffer area) and distance to transmission/distribution/substations. We also experimented with weighting the scores. B7