MinWind: Farmer-Owned

by Paul Gipe

When giant wind farms began rising in their midst, a group of innovative Minnesota farmers asked whether there was another way. Could they do it themselves, or would they, too, have to lease their land on the state's famed Buffalo Ridge to out-of-state wind developers? Was there a way to develop wind energy and yet keep as many of the benefits as possible flowing through the local economy.

After two years of struggle, a group of farmers in the southwest corner of the state proved that indeed community wind development could be done. Like farmers elsewhere in North America, they found that the biggest challenge was not the technology, not the wind resource, not raising the money. It was finding a utility that would buy the electricity at a fair price.

The stubborn farmers wouldn't surrender their dream, says Mark Willers. They eventually persevered, erecting four 950-kilowatt NEG-Micon turbines on the land of one of the participating farmers.

Willers, who raises corn and soybeans near Beaver Creek, Minnesota, was one of the farmers instrumental in bringing the project to fruition. He and his neighbors could see that farming in the Midwest had become, in business-school jargon, a mature industry. They were competing with each other to produce a commodity product at ever lower cost. The farmers needed another source of revenue if they were to survive. And if they couldn't survive, the communities of which they were a part would also die.

From their experience with the area's cooperatively-owned ethanol plants, they knew the energy business and could see that wind energy has a bright future. Wind energy was increasingly competitive with other sources, and, because of its modularity, offered the possibility of local ownership.

"There's a difference between local ownership," says Willers, and what it can offer the community, and absentee-ownership where the landowner--the farmer--receives only a royalty. Willers and the group of 66 local investors made a point of using local contractors and consultants to maximize local benefits.

The farmers created two partnerships with two turbines each, dubbed MinWind I & II, and structured them to be open to members of the community who are not farmers themselves. Owners include two grocers and a newspaper editor, as well as farmers in the area.

The partnerships are managed essentially as a cooperative. Willers and his colleagues created them to take advantage of both the U.S. federal tax credit and the state of Minnesota's incentive payment for wind projects up to 2 Megawatts, a program specifically designed to help the state's farmers.

Farmers have both the financial resources and the entrepreneurial spirit needed to make projects as MinWind happen, says Willers proudly. The farmers shocked observers when they raised the equity portion of the $3.5 million project in only twelve days.

Willers and the civic-minded group of farmers who made MinWind a reality are now working with other groups to replicate their model of local-ownership.

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