DuPont unveiled its newest solar project in the First State Friday.
State officials joined company representatives at DuPont’s Photovoltaics Applications Lab in Wilmington tout the project located in Newport.
The project is located on the site of a landfill DuPont once used for it’s Newport pigment manufacturing facility. It was designated a Superfund site in 1994 and took until 2002 to completely remediate.
DuPont then worked with federal and state agencies as well as Greenwood Energy to develop a 548-kilowatt solar project on the site.
The project includes 5 acres of DuPont Solar panels and generates about 729,000 kilowatt hours a year, enough to power about 60 homes in the surrounding community while removing 350 tons of carbon emissions from the air.
Governor Jack Markell (D-Delaware) says the project is an example of the First State’s deep involvement in solar energy.
"Anytime we get to deploy more solar here in Delaware is great," said Markell. "We have, over the last four years, increased the deployment of solar by 25 fold. And it’s always great to see the deployment of solar in Delaware when what is being deployed is a product of a Delaware company. DuPont has been a great leader in this arena for such a long period of time.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic regional administrator Shawn Garvin said that this project is also a model for how to deal with polluted sites.
“The idea of fencing them off and walking away was kind of how we did it years and years and years ago," said Garvin. "Now we have the opportunity to put energy sources on, renewable energy sources on that aren’t only going to help the community but really focus on how do we deal with climate change.”
The project is DuPont’s fourth solar installation in Delaware.
DuPont is the largest supplier of specialty materials to the solar industry with over half of the world’s solar panels containing DuPont materials.