| Abstract |
Local farmers, towns, schools, and individual investors are, however, beginning to invest in wind power. With the help of state policy and clean energy fund support, new federal incentives, and creative local wind developers who have devised ownership structures that maximize the value of both state and federal support, community wind power is beginning to take a foothold in parts of the US, in particular the upper Midwest. The purpose of this report is to describe that foothold, as well as the state support that helped to create it. There are a number of reasons why states are becoming increasingly interested in community wind power. In rural Midwestern states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois, community wind is seen as a way to help supplement and stabilize farmer income, and thereby contribute to the preservation of farming communities and the rural landscapes and values they create. In the Northeast, densely populated states such as Massachusetts are turning to community-scale wind development to increase not only the amount of wind power on the grid, but also the public's knowledge, perception, and acceptance of wind power. In still other areas--such as the Pacific Northwest, which is already home to several large wind farms--states are simply responding to strong interest from local constituents who see community wind power as a way to take responsibility for, and mitigate the environmental impact of, electricity generation. But what exactly is 'community wind power'. Definitions vary widely, ranging from behind-the-meter installations to the Danish wind 'cooperatives' to wind projects owned by municipal utilities. Possible defining criteria include: project size (small vs. large projects); purpose (to offset end-use power consumption vs. to sell power to the grid); ownership (single local vs. multiple local vs. municipal utility vs. commercial owners); and interconnection (behind the meter vs. to the distribution grid vs. to the transmission grid). For the purposes of this report, 'community wind' is defined as locally owned utility-scale wind development, on either the customer or utility side of the meter. This definition accommodates projects of various sizes (e.g., ranging from single utility-scale turbine installations at Iowa schools all the way up to the 100 MW Trimont project in Minnesota), single or multiple local owners, and perhaps even municipal utilities. In this report, however, municipal utility projects will only be mentioned if specifically funded by a state clean energy fund. Within the confines of this definition, this report first describes state support for, and the status of, community wind in the upper Midwest, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. The focus then shifts to the Northeast, where Massachusetts and, to a lesser extent, New York have recently funded community wind initiatives. The report concludes in the western US by briefly describing community wind-related work just getting underway in Oregon and Washington, as well as a few isolated projects in California, Idaho, and on tribal lands. |
