{"id":3441,"date":"2025-10-27T16:59:39","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T16:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/?p=3441"},"modified":"2025-10-27T17:00:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T17:00:06","slug":"landfills-and-solar-panels-where-they-belong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/2025\/10\/27\/landfills-and-solar-panels-where-they-belong\/","title":{"rendered":"Landfills and Solar Panels: where they belong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>how many acres of landfill are there in the usa and how much electricity could we generate if we covered 50% of it with solar panels<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Estimates indicate there are at least 1.8 million acres of landfill in the&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>United States, and potentially millions more from thousands of older, closed sites. If 50% of the currently identified landfill area were covered with solar panels, it could produce&nbsp;<mark>41.65 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity each year<\/mark>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Landfill acres in the USA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The 3,000+ active landfills in the US occupy an estimated\u00a0<strong>1.8 million acres<\/strong>. This is based on an average size of 600 acres per landfill.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are an additional 10,000+ closed or inactive municipal landfills across the country, many of which were not included in this acreage estimate.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Electricity generated from covering 50% of landfills with solar panels<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Based on a study of closed landfills, covering just a portion of these sites could yield substantial electricity production.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Total Potential:<\/strong>\u00a0Researchers identified 4,314 landfills (from the larger group of 10,000+ closed sites) that could be good candidates for solar energy. Covering these sites could generate 83.3 TWh of energy per year.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Capacity:<\/strong>\u00a0This is equivalent to a solar capacity of 63.2 gigawatts (GW).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>50% of landfill potential:<\/strong>\u00a0The study covers less than half of the 10,000+ closed landfills in the US. If the potential of 83.3 TWh is assumed to represent 100% of the documented potential, covering 50% of this capacity would generate\u00a0<strong>41.65 TWh of electricity per year<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Comparison:<\/strong>\u00a0To put this into perspective, 83.3 TWh is enough to power 7.8 million homes annually.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>how many acres of landfill are there in the usa and how much electricity could we generate if we covered 50% of it with solar&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3443,"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions\/3443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raybush.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}