Community Supported Wind Power
(Page 3 of 6)
June/July 2008
By Greg Pahl
This advantage alone should be sufficient justification for pursuing the co-op model, but community wind projects offer yet another advantage: According to a number of studies, they retain a greater amount of income in the local area, substantially increasing the economic benefits for the community over projects owned by out-of-area corporate developers — possibly as much as three to four times more. Farmers and area residents have the opportunity to build, own, operate and profit from their own renewable energy systems.
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Community wind projects can be owned individually, cooperatively or collectively through a variety of legal mechanisms. Community wind legal structures can include limited liability corporations (LLCs), cooperatives, school districts, municipal utilities, other municipal entities or various combinations of these.
The best structure for any particular project depends on a wide range of variables as well as federal, state and local laws and regulations. If one strategy doesn’t work, another might. The key is to find the right structure for your particular project. What these strategies all have in common is some form of community ownership and group benefit. The main point is to identify the project as belonging to the community, which may avoid (or at least minimize) the usual conflicts between local residents and developers, whose large-scale, commercial proposals are often viewed as primarily benefiting absentee owners.
Lisa Daniels, executive director and founder of Windustry, a Minnesota-based nonprofit organization working to create an understanding of wind energy opportunities for rural communities, is enthusiastic about the potential for locally owned wind projects. “In this country, most wind turbines have been set up by developers from outside of the community,” she says. “So, most of the time rural landowners are leasing their land to external wind developers for an annual royalty. But those wind projects start to look a lot better when they are in smaller clusters and when there is local ownership of those clusters, which keeps more money circulating in the local economy.”
Successful Examples
Of all the examples of locally based wind projects in North America that follow a cooperative model, one of the best is probably Toronto’s WindShare. The turbine, which stands 94 meters (308 feet) high, is located on the Lake Ontario waterfront. The $1.6 million, 750-kilowatt turbine started turning in early 2003 and produces enough electricity every year to power about 250 homes. WindShare, in a 50/50 partnership with Toronto Hydro, owns the turbine and the power it generates. The co-op and Toronto Hydro share equal responsibility for development, capital costs, operation, maintenance and all other agreements related to the project. WindShare currently has 427 members.
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