Project description

With Fresh Kills Park at the southern end of the site, the Arthur Kill River shoreline has a long history of receiving waste from New York City for landfill. The project proposes a new material flow that upcycles disused solar panels into glass-based sediment products beneficial to the site, forming a new type of circularity that emphasizes environmental sustainability while advancing renewable energy.

The Arthur Kill shore is at high risk for flooding from both sea level rise and severe storms. It is also a site of multiple industrial infrastructures, including power plants, pipelines, and natural gas storage tanks. The conflux of flooding and centralized energy infrastructure increases energy insecurity and presents the need for decentralized power sources. In addition, New York City has proposed a 100% clean energy plan for 2040.

This project follows the NYC clean energy guidelines, selecting solar energy as a focus, since solar panels are easier to install and can function at different scales: rooftop, community, and utility levels. The main focus of the project is “wetland voltaics.” Derived from the word “agrivoltaics,” this concept adds solar panels to wetlands while supporting marsh migration and restoration. Because solar energy is Direct Current, it has a two-mile distance limitation of local transference, which helps define the project's scope.

Because solar panels have a useful lifespan of about 35 years, this project also deals with solar panel recycling. Currently, most solar panels are dumped into landfills after their end of life, but multiple startups have developed methods to recycle solar panels, and the recycling rate is very high. This project plans for the local reuse of these recycled materials. Glass is the main component of the panels that are recycled, and the project proposes to transform this glass into three types of material: glass sand, glass sediment, and glass reefs. Each glass type can be combined with different landforms to create new sediments for future wetland ecologies.

As the site is transitioning to renewable energy, the current fossil-fuel-based power infrastructure will be abandoned in the future but will be memorized in other ways. The pipeline monument trail follows the pathway of the current underground natural gas pipelines that echo back to the site's petrochemical history. After the end of the use of the pipelines, this trail will exist as a way for people to acknowledge the petrochemical past. The trail is elevated to adapt to future sea level rise. With the future wetland marsh and open water, people can explore this energy landscape and have access to the restored wetlands and new energy landscape.