Reporting from WINDPOWER 2010 - Community Wind

This morning at AWEA, I attended a session entitled "Financing & Policy Issues for Community Wind." The speakers were Jeff Wright of Midwest Wind Finance, Ryan Harry of BCS, Incorporated, George Baker of Island Institute, Mark Bolinger of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Edwin T. C. Ing of the Law Office of Edwin T. C. Ing. I chose this session because I was unsure what "community wind" was. I have worked on projects where landowners have formed a single entity to represent all the landowners but was curious about community wind. 

Community wind is rather loosely defined and can encompass projects as diverse as those developed under Community Based Energy Development statutes (C-BED) which vary among states to local based communities developing small wind projects to serve the energy needs for the community. The financing of these type of projects can be difficult, but overall, the panel thought that 1603 grants were generally going to be the best route due to the lack of tax appetite by the community investors. 

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