The Nature Conservancy in Illinois is working on a plan to transition degraded lands into energy producing centers.

Nature Conservancy Illinois Climate And Energy Associate Larissa Armstrong tells us about mining the sun.

Now, it sounds like with the "Mining the Sun" report, the Nature Conservancy is doing a few things.

One, using land that may not have a lot of uses for something that some people don't wanna see on farmland or maybe in their backyards.

We're talking about solar farms.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the "Mining the Sun" report?

- Sure.

"Mining the Sun" really encourages building solar projects on brownfields or degraded lands, former industrialized sites, abandoned mine lands, things like that.

Prioritizing building in those areas before we build renewable energy projects on prime agricultural land or in places that have a lot of natural benefits, nature spaces, things like that.

So "Mining the Sun" is really designed to kind of encourage building and degraded lands before we're using up more beneficial lands.

- And are there any challenges to choosing these sites?

Like you said, abandoned mines, landfills, things like that?

- Sure, I think some of the challenges are costs, right?

So figuring out, sometimes having to do remediation on those sites to get them ready for that type of development can cost a little bit more upfront than say just putting some solar down on a green field somewhere.

It also depends on who owns the land and whether or not they're interested in working with solar companies to lease the land.

The benefit there is that that land, if it is leased by a solar company, then is going to generate income for the land owner.

And then really just if communities are interested in these types of projects, the folks that work for municipalities or counties, whatever, might not actually have the time or resources to pursue these types of projects or the technical expertise, which would be where organizations like the Nature Conservancy could come in and lend a hand to help guide people through the process.

- Yeah, tell us a little bit more about how the Nature Conservancy could potentially help in these projects.

- Sure, so we really want to try to be subject matter experts for communities.

So this could be anything from hosting informational sessions in communities for community members to help them understand the benefits of these types of projects, working with municipalities to basically see there are barriers to these types of projects being built, and how we might fill in some of those gaps.

Could be anything from us creating communication between developers and communities or even helping to draft sort of template requests for proposals that communities can use to try to pursue these types of projects.

- Are there any projects you can tell us about that are going on right now in Illinois or around the country regarding this?

- Sure.

So the Nature Conservancy has a pilot project in Kentucky called Starfire Mine Project.

It's gonna be around an 800 megawatt facility.

It's in partnership with Rivian Motors to basically help them generate clean energy that they can use to offset their energy use at their various plants.

And then in Illinois, while these are not specifically Nature Conservancy projects, they're still modeling the "Mining the Sun" principles.

There's a solar project on the closed landfill in Urbana that is part of the Illinois Solar for All program.

It's a five-megawatts system that generates energy and then the low to moderate income residents in the area subscribed to it and see significant savings on their energy bills.

Similar project was just a finished construction in Waukegan, which is about a nine-megawatt project on a super fund site that really was not designed to have anything else there, but they're putting this there so they're really making good use of some lands that otherwise wasn't really good for much of anything else.

Closer to home, McLean County where I live also just approved a 134-acre solar project on the closed landfill in McLean County.

And then I believe that in Peoria, I saw a little news clip that, in July, the Peoria City Council approved an option to lease for the landfill in Peoria that is shared between, I think, Peoria City and the county.

That doesn't mean anything is happening there yet, but it gives the option for a solar developer to pursue a project on that site.

- Again, these don't happen overnight.

It takes quite a lot of planning and building of course.

But do you think as these do start to come online, and people actually see them in action, that you think more people, more municipalities are gonna be interested in doing this?

I really do think so.

Illinois has a lot of really great renewable energy legislation and we're seeing a lot of renewable energy development across the state.

But I do think that once communities know that this type of project is an option for them, I think that communities are going to be interested in pursuing these types of projects before pursuing projects that are gonna use up prime natural spaces and agricultural land.

Obviously, you need a lot of land to build larger scale solar arrays, and most of the large swaths of land are downstate.

And we have a lot of corn and soy here, and that's a really important part of our economy.

So we wanna make sure that we're respecting those spaces.

It's not going to be impossible to avoid building in those spaces, but we can try to prioritize building integrated lands first so that we're using up lands that's not really good for much else before we use up any other kinds.

I would just like to reiterate that Illinois has a really great opportunity right now.

We have more than 200,000 acres of former strip mines and thousands of other former industrialized sites across the state that could host clean energy without touching prime farmland or green space.

And the Nature Conservancy's "Mining the Sun" report shows that when we prioritize these already impacted land, and communities are helping shape how those projects move forward, that we're creating renewable energy projects that are more beneficial for communities and for nature.