This articly interestingly compares what both Europe has learned fron North America, and vice versa in regards to wind energy development. Minnesota and Ontario are highlighted as leaders in North America. The article also notes key market and policy measures that have enabled local ownership, as well as those which are geared to larger projects (PTC). Read on below...

Local ownership of local wind power spreads to America

Community ownership of small-scale wind projects lies behind the development of around 70% of the world's installed wind power to date, yet the concept is almost unknown in North America. Here the sector has been thoroughly dominated by massive projects and big league owners. That could be about to change — and rapidly. Rural Minnesota is emerging as a breeding ground for local development of local wind power, as is the Canadian province of Ontario.

Farmers and other landowners in the North American prairies have long recognised that leasing property to wind turbine owners can provide steady income that supplements corn and cows. Now they are increasingly coming to realise that owning the turbine can exponentially escalate incomes and rescue farms — and that ownership is well within reach. A recent study suggests that while Minnesota landowners might receive annual lease payments between $2000-$5000 per turbine, owning the turbine can double or triple that income.

Minnesotans, it seems, have much in common with the European wind energy pioneers in rural communities who championed installation of wind turbines by the people for the people more than a quarter of a century ago. "It's about wanting to own land and have control over your situation — it's kind of a natural thing and we have a lot of those people here," says Beth Soholt of Wind on the Wires, a Minnesota wind power advocacy group. "We call it prairie populism."

But from the outset, North America structured its wind power markets for big scale projects by big time investors, not small projects by farmers. First there was regulation which encouraged utility-scale project development, later came wind's federal production tax credit (PTC), only useful to companies looking to reduce large tax bills.

Landowners and others in windswept locations with dreams of installing their own turbines locally could only watch on from the sidelines as commercial companies moved in. From California to Quebec, from Texas to Minnesota, thousands of wind turbines were installed in markets geared for large projects by large companies. "The PTC is a policy written by big business for big business," is how Lisa Daniels from a local wind power advocacy group in the Midwest describes it.

Meantime, Europe headed off down the local development route. Here wind power blossomed as a broad people's movement. The enthusiasm of relatively small groups of visionaries — with one of the owners of Windpower Monthly among the early leaders — inspired governments to structure markets that allowed local development of a local resource. These days the model, though it still exists in some countries, has largely become a victim of its own
success: the pioneering days are over.

Europe has learned much from the American way. From its amateur beginnings, wind power in Europe's main markets is highly commercial and highly professional. Though not always large scale, some of the biggest wind farms in the world now operate in Europe or off its coasts.

Not without some irony, America is now starting to copy the early European model. Years of lobbying by the supporters of small-scale wind development are beginning to pay off, both in the United States and in Canada. As in Europe, public policy is the enabling force. Minnesota and Ontario have both introduced legislation directly aimed at facilitating local development of local projects. The models are different in detail, but both offer a fixed power purchase price high enough to make owning a wind turbine economically possible.

We reported on the Ontario legislation in Windpower Monthly's April issue.
This month we take a close look, in a series of articles, at what is going on in Minnesota as giant utility Xcel is cajoled by the state's political leaders into facilitating the installation of 500 MW of locally owned wind turbines. Even America's iconic tractor company, John Deere, has got itself deeply involved. The key to unlocking the market is some original creative financing, which, for the first time, is making the PTC accessible to landowners, their families and their friends.