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Friday, December 18, 2009

Environment - "A European wind is blowing across east central Indiana"

That is the headline to a lengthy story today by Seth Slabaugh of the Muncie Star-Press. Some quotes:

MUNCIE -- East Central Indiana is fast becoming a global hotspot for wind energy development.

Wind energy manufacturers with roots in Italy and Germany already have moved here. Wind farm developers based in Portugal and Germany could be next. Can the Chinese be far behind?

Land owners in Delaware and Randolph counties recently met with representatives of E.ON Climate & Renewables North America to discuss a proposed $300 million to $400 million wind farm in the two counties. Headquartered in Chicago, the company is a subsidiary of Dusseldorf-based E.ON AG, one of the world's largest energy companies. * * *

About 100 land owners attended the meeting at Desoto Elementary School, which Delaware Community Schools officials are considering closing.

E.ON is considering a wind farm roughly bounded by Ind. 32, Ind. 1, Ind. 67 and Albany, said Kim Cuthbertson, a secretary for the Delaware-Muncie Metropolitan Plan Commission who attended the meeting.

One subject during the dinner meeting, at which E.ON served fried chicken and pulled pork catered by Pete's Duck Inn, was land lease payments.

Wind farms generate land lease payments, significant property tax revenue, hundreds of construction jobs and 10 to 20 permanent maintenance and operating jobs for each wind farm.

For example, each land owner of the proposed Horizon Wind Energy wind farm in Randolph County would receive $7,000 to $9,000 in lease payments annually for each turbine. That's $350,000 to $900,000 in total annual lease payments to local property owners, depending on the number of turbines to be installed.

In addition, Horizon pays the owners of land located between the wind turbines.

"All land owners, whether they have a turbine or not, get a base payment, and people with turbines get additional payments," Martin Culik, a project manager for Horizon, said in March of 2008. When he said "all land owners," he meant those near a turbine, usually within a quarter of a mile. "Even that is pretty generous," he said. "This is a hallmark of Horizon's work and why they (land owners) selected us."

Horizon is owned by a Portuguese company. Another wind farm in Randolph and Jay counties is being proposed by Fort Wayne-based Indiana Michigan Power. * * *

Based on the meeting at Desoto, it doesn't appear that there will be widespread opposition to a wind farm in northeastern Delaware County. That's the same area of the county that successfully opposed Duke Energy's proposed natural-gas fired peaking power plant several years ago. There also was opposition in that area to the Ag Biovision Park.

Because of the large number of affected land owners -- 600 to 800 -- E.ON is planning more meetings to discuss its project here, Cuthbertson said.

She described the crowd at the meeting with E.ON officials as "cautiously optimistic."

Questions asked by the audience included how much noise is made by wind farms and the impact on property values.

Horizon's wind turbines in Randolph County would each stand about 260 feet tall, in addition to the 130-foot-long blades that would extend the height of the structure to nearly 400 feet.

The U.S. wind energy industry installed more than 8,300 megawatts in 2008, expanding the nation's total wind-power generating capacity by 50 percent and surpassing Germany as the world's largest producer of wind energy. Indiana had the nation's fastest growth in wind-power generation in 2008.

The ILB has had a number of entries on wind turbines.

An additional story appeared in the Dec. 13, 2009 NY Times, reported by Doreen Carvajal, and headed "With Wind Energy, Opportunity for Corruption." From the lengthy story:

Wind farm development follows a common pattern in Europe and the United States. It is a complex chain in which, typically, small entrepreneurs strike deals for long-term land leases with farmers and seek local government approvals for wind parks. Then the entrepreneurs sell development packages through intermediaries to large multinational companies or utilities that actually build the wind parks.

Even the big companies have been burned in the process; Vestas Wind Systems, a Danish company that is the leading manufacturer of wind turbines in the world, revealed this year that it was the victim of a €12 million fraud scheme. The company asserts that three top Spanish employees, who are under investigation by the authorities in Barcelona, issued payments for nonexistent services to companies under their control, shifting the money in separate businesses to invest in wind turbines.

In New York, wind developers were prodded over the summer to sign an ethics code barring gifts to public officials, a standard developed by the office of the state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, who also created a task force to monitor development of the industry.

“It’s a very new area of development with the promise of a lot of money that can be made, both for the developers of wind farms and landowners,” said John Milgrim, a spokesman for the New York attorney general’s office, who noted that the industry had been largely unregulated. “Anytime there’s financial dealings, new industry and large sums of money, there is potential for corruption.

“Part of what government can do is create standards that both sides can follow,” he said, noting that the code establishes a transparent system for public information about land leases and connections between wind developers and municipal officials and their families.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 18, 2009 10:20 AM
Posted to Environment