# Presentation: 376963

## Wind Energy Cooperatives:Landowner Opportunities

**Jim Rogers**
**Brown’s Creek Angus Ranch**
**(307) 745-8729  **
**Milt Geiger**
**USDA Rural Development**
**(307) 672-5820, ext. 4**
**milt.geiger@wy.usda.gov**

**Notes:**
The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (the Farm Bill) created a number of programs for rural America including a direct and guaranteed loan and grant program to help fund renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvement projects in rural America.  

This program, created in Section 9006 of the Farm Bill, is a 5-year program to help farmers, ranchers and rural small businesses purchase renewable energy systems and make energy efficiency improvements. 

## The Need: Jim Rogers

- Allow landowners to be “price-makers” instead of “price-takers”
- Enable effective information-sharing
- Locally and regionally

## The Idea...

- By working together, both locally and regionally, landowners can potentially:
- Enhance financial gains from wind energy development
- Retain more control over their own resource
- Influence the type of development on their land
- Act as a good neighbor

## What a Wind Co-op Could Do:

- Distribute Information
- The how to’s of wind energy development, business plans, etc.
- Group Purchasing
- Anemometers, legal advice, etc.
- Joint Marketing
- Prevent one neighbor from being played against another
- Organization for Ownership
- “Piggyback” model

## Information Sharing:

- Exchange information between individuals and other co-ops
- Resource assessments
- Contract structures
- Lease payments
- Equitable information at the negotiating table with wind developers
- Single, larger voice for influencing policy

## Purchasing Co-op

- Reduce the expense of resource examination
- Anemometers, transmission feasibility studies, etc.
- Provide access to services
- Legal counsel, business services, etc.

## Joint Marketing of Wind Resources:

- Equitable price to be paid for wind development rights
- Not more than wind developers can afford to pay, but a fair valuation of landowner’s wind resources
- Prevents individual landowners from  being “price-takers”
- Allows landowners to do some of the work of wind developers, such as aggregating land and evaluating wind resources
- Landowners get compensated for this work

## Ownership Potential

- Additional income
- Can be negotiated with wind developers
- Piggyback model
- Co-op diversifies risk and enables community involvement
- Limits NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)
- Structure determined by tax/grant opportunities
- USDA Section 9006 Grant and Guaranteed loans
- Production Tax Credit (PTC)

## Potential Structure

- What size will the co-op/association be?
- Local or regional
- Is there role for a statewide co-op of co-ops?
- How are boundaries determined?
- How much land do wind developers want?
- What structure maximizes profit while minimizing effort?
- Co-op, LLC, association, etc.

## USDA Rural Development Supported “Pre-Feasibility” Study

- Involvement could help answer some questions
- Not a commitment to any one model or a particular co-op
- Supports access to other USDA funding sources
- Value-Added Producer Grant
- Section 9006: Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Grant & Guaranteed Loan Program
- Provides information for effectively developing local co-ops

## Contact Information:

**Jim Rogers**
**Brown’s Creek Angus Ranch**
**(307) 745-8729  **
**Milt Geiger**
**USDA Rural Development**
**(307) 672-5820, ext. 4**
**milt.geiger@wy.usda.gov**