Community Wind Toolbox Chapter 16: Public Policy for Community Wind
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Hundreds of megawatts of community wind projects have already been installed throughout the country, but increased policy support for locally-owned projects is needed so that rural America can continue to benefit from this growing industry.
The Farmer’s Legal Action Group (FLAG) recently published a report titled: “Community Wind: A Review of Select State and Federal Policy Incentives” that examines policies that increase the viability of community wind projects. The report is intended to help local policy makers identify the key policy initiatives that will best support community wind development in their jurisdictions. The FLAG report is an excellent overview of the policy issues related to community wind development today and therefore we will simply provide a link to it for this section of the Toolbox, rather than duplicate that information here. The report can be found by clicking here.
The FLAG report does not indicate the relative merit of the various policies that it examines, however. The policies need to be ranked so that policymakers can create an overall policy package that effectively addresses existing needs. Thus Windustry evaluated and ranked each policy summarized in the FLAG report based on their financial impact, practicality, and how they address key market barriers. Our analysis, titled “Reaching Community Wind’s Potential,” can be found online by clicking the link.
Additional Resources
- Policy Resources web page - Links to a wide range of policy articles.
- Policy Information - Federal, State, local, policy information as well as C-BED information
Read more:
This report by David Morris of the Institute for Local Self Reliance can be downloaded here.
This report was published by the GAO in September 2004. This report talks about current wind power generation in the U.S. and prospects for growth, economic contributions from wind power to farm income and rural communities in ten states, the trade-offs for farmers of owning a wind project vs. leasing land to a wind project, and the USDA's efforts to promote on-farm rural wind development.
This report by Teresa Welsh of The Iowa Policy Project was published April 2005. This report highlights three analyses that compare the economic development benefits of small-scale, locally owned generation to other larger capacity ownership structures and discusses the barriers and changes necessary to aid the development of small scale, locally owned wind generation, specifically in Iowa.
Best Practices
Caution
Links to more information
Information that will affect your project’s bottom line
Example