The goal of the agreement is to build community solar, small utility-scale solar, and energy storage projects on 50 or more of WM’s capped landfill sites in the US.
Reactivate, a firm owned by Invenergy, and WM (previously Waste Management) have said they would work together to build solar energy projects on more than 50 old landfill sites.
The corporations argue that this will help the grid stay strong and provide real economic advantages to the places where these projects are built. Reactivate will plan, build, own, and run projects.
Reactivate informed PV magazine USA that it would put projects in order of importance depending on the local solar market and the ability to connect to the grid in places where strong community solar and distributed generation initiatives are already in place. The business thinks that the first phase of projects will be done by the end of 2027.
Turning Landfills Into “Brightfields”
The EPA’s RE-Powering America’s Land program is one of several that encourage the rising trend of putting renewable energy projects on land that is now or was formerly polluted. The initiative has monitored 624 renewable energy projects on landfills, mining sites, and land that used to be polluted as of December 2024. These projects had a total capacity of more than 4.3 GW.
The overall capacity of solar PV installations at old waste sites was over 972 MW. The software keeps track of several big landfill solar projects, such as a 25.6 MW plant in Mount Olive, NJ, and a 25.4 MW facility in Pittsburg, CA.
But it may be hard to build landfill solar projects, and they don’t always go as planned. In 2021, there was a lot of talk about a 50MW project planned at a site outside of Houston, TX. As recently as 2024, the project was facing financial woes due in part to high interest rates, and construction has not yet commenced.
According to the EPA program’s best practices document, most landfill sites need to settle for 2 to 3 years before they can be developed. Also, solar installations on capped land often need to be ballasted systems instead of the ground-mounted racking that is more common on large greenfield projects, so they don’t break through the barrier layer.
Invenergy, a worldwide energy development company, and Lafayette Square, an impact investing platform that gives money and services to local companies in areas that don’t get enough attention or services, work together on Reactivate.
