Green Remediation Best Management Practices: Integrating Renewable Energy into Site Cleanup

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Principles for Greener Cleanups outline the Agency's policy for evaluating and minimizing the environmental 'footprint' of activities undertaken when cleaning up a contaminated site. Use of the best management practices (BMPs) identified in EPA's series of green remediation fact sheets can help project managers and other stakeholders apply the principles on a routine basis, while maintaining the cleanup objectives, ensuring protectiveness of a remedy, and improving its environmental outcome. Use of renewable energy resources provides a significant opportunity to reduce the environmental footprint of activities conducted during investigation, remediation, and monitoring of hazardous waste sites. Substitution of energy from fossil fuel resources with energy from renewable resources is a primary approach for addressing energy as one of the five core elements of green remediation strategies. In turn, lower consumption of fossil fuel will reduce emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) as well as particulate matter and other air pollutants.

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