‘Land No One Else Wants’ Gets Solar as Coal, Nukes Die (Corrected)

For two decades, coal has been pulled from a Bent Mountain mine in eastern Kentucky. But in a startling move in the heart of coal country, a rival—solar—is preparing to move on to the land.

From Appalachia in the U.S. to Queensland in Australia and Chernobyl in Ukraine, solar and wind farms are being developed or built in places not normally associated with clean energy, and in some regions long resistant to it.

Slapping solar panels atop so-called brownfield sites, land that housed mines, emissions-belching power plants or were tarnished by nuclear disaster, can be cheaper than decontaminating the ground ...