I have been approached by a publicly traded energy company which wants to purchase an option on my land for future rights to put up wind turbines. They have been talking to many landowners in the area.

I am starting to explore the pros and cons of doing business with a publicly traded energy giant. On the one hand, a large company assumes the risk and puts up the capital to do the development. On the other hand, a fair bit of money will flow out of the local economy.

This is a rural area without a lot of extra capital floating around. In addition, I don't feel as if there is a lot of awareness of local vs. corporate issues.

What's next? How do I educate myself? What do others need to know? The state has already been wrestling with large corporate farming operations vs. the small local farmer. I don't see the energy issue as very different. It seems as if local communities would be better off if they maintain control of their energy resources.

Thoughts?

Hi DJ!

You've done a good job of identifying the basic trade off here. On the one hand, leasing land to a developer has low risk and more stable return, and takes a lot less work. On the other hand, community-owned wind has much greater risk and takes more work on your part, but the rewards can be a lot greater.

You're also right that an important first step is to become educated. Read everything you can find, and talk to everyone you can talk to!

I think a good first place for you would be a study out of the U of M Morris that looks at the comparative economic benefits of corporate vs. community wind. They found that community-owned wind has 5 times as much economic benefit for the local community as corporate wind. You can read the study at http://cda.mrs.umn.edu/~kildegac/CV/Papers/IREE.pdf.

Windustry's web site ( www.windustry.org) also had a ton of resources about wind, wind development, and especially about community wind . In particular, you should check out the Community Wind project case studies, so you can get a sense of how some others have worked through these same issues.

Good luck!

Marin

There are also some developers that will develop the wind farm and then turn the resulting company over to the community to run. The lease agreements are structured a bit differently than standard but they do exist.

Some developers will also train/educate people within your community to actually run the farm. This results in much of the money being generated going back to your community.

We also reinvest 20% of the net profits in the communities those revenues were generated in, on a grant basis.