Two hundred ten acres of lead- and arsenic-contaminated land make up the West Pullman Industrial Redevelopment Area, a sprawling complex of vacant lots and caved-in storage sheds. Satellite photos show green trees ripping through the abandoned parking lots on this “brownfield,” a term for polluted land that can be redeveloped for industrial or even residential use after clean-up. This area might see another kind of greening by next spring, if Exelon receives federal funding for a proposed 39-acre, $60 million solar plant claimed to be the largest of its kind in any American urban environment.

In a joint press release with SunPower Corporation on April 22, Exelon announced plans for the South Side plant, which would provide 10 megawatts of power and create around 200 jobs during construction. The project’s payoff will be vastly lower than its cost, even considering that Exelon hopes to have up to 80 percent of expenditures covered by the government—the power giant, parent company of Commonwealth Edison, already operates six nuclear power plants in Illinois, and the smallest generates over 1,700 megawatts annually. The actual benefits may lie in the solar plant’s potential as a model. Rehabilitating a toxic site into an earth-friendly power generator is more than a public relations coup for Exelon, the city of Chicago, and SunPower, the manufacturer of the project’s solar panels: just as home electronics become more affordable as more consumers adopt them, a working demonstration of green power’s integration into one of the country’s largest energy markets may encourage investors and drive the price of solar technology low enough for a real green revolution.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s most recent statistics from 2005, 96 percent of Illinois power was provided by nuclear and coal plants, each type generating half of the subtotal. Two coal plants operate within the city of Chicago, both on the South Side. The Fisk generating station in Pilsen and the Crawford plant in Little Village, together generating some 900 megawatts of power, were built before the Clean Air Act of 1970 and thus are exempt from federal emissions standards. Both plants were linked to increased illness and mortality among community residents in a 2002 study by Levy et al. of the Harvard School of Public Health, published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. Though the plants and their pollution have received media attention, instigated in part by a campaign by the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization, neither market forces nor the EPA seem to be curbing their activity. Viable competition—if not through Exelon’s new plant, then through the imitators to follow—may finally force a change.

An 18-megawatt SunPower solar plant built last year in Madrid looks more like a farm than an industrial project. Skinny rows of black solar panels stretch over the brown earth to the horizon like low-growing crops, tilting with the angle of the sun’s rays to make the most of daylight. Chicago, known better for months of gray skies, may not seem like an ideal fit for solar energy, but the technology must be ubiquitous if it is to be genuinely useful. In the initial press release, SunPower CEO Tom Werner claims that the company’s panels can be installed “anywhere and at any scale—from rooftops, to parking lots, to utility-scale power plants, and urban industrial sites.” While a complete switch to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power is almost certainly impossible in the near future, small demonstrations, especially those backed by the industry establishment, can generate a lot of potential.