Can a wind farm owner sue a neighbor for interfering with the breeze?

Welcome to the ‘wild west’ of wind law

Can a wind farm owner sue a neighbor for interfering with the breeze?

That question is high on the radar of renewable energy law experts as government officials push for more offshore wind development and as analysts predict that solar, wind and other alternative domestic power sources could overtake coal.

An emerging body of scientific evidence shows that wind farm “wakes” – or the air flow downwind of an active turbine – can significantly diminish the energy potential of the wind for nearby developers, who tend to cluster near limited transmission points.

Left unchecked, wind farm wakes could lead to less efficient energy generation, disputes between developers and lost royalties for the public.

“There is a huge disconnect between science and policy,” said K.K. DuVivier, an energy law professor at the University of Denver. “This is one where there seems to be a particular blind spot because wind is invisible.”

Like a boat churning through water or a jet flying through the sky, a wind turbine creates downstream turbulence. For wind facilities located up to a half-mile behind an active turbine, wakes can lead to both premature equipment fatigue and decreased electricity production, according to research DuVivier and her colleagues published in the journal Nature Energy in January.

A wake can be created by either a single turbine or a group of turbines on a wind farm.

In the absence of defined regulations, developers will use defensive strategies to protect their wind resource, but those tactics can be highly inefficient, DuVivier said. For example, buffer zones can protect the area around a turbine but can also put huge areas out of reach to wind generators.

Understanding the science of wind wakes could help developers build their farms more strategically and potentially avoid litigation, she said.

Despite President Trump’s criticisms of the wind industry, some of his top officials have championed offshore wind development (Energywire, Oct. 18, 2018).

On the outer continental shelf, where the wind is considered a federal resource, legal battles between developers are not a concern, but policymakers should still be paying attention to the science on wind farm wakes to ensure that they’re getting the biggest bang for taxpayers’ buck, DuVivier said.

“The fact that they’re not coordinating is even more critical because it means the public is losing out on royalties,” she said.

Case law on wind wake effects is extremely limited.

When Troy Rule was a young lawyer in Seattle, an industry client asked him who would win in a dispute over an upwind farm affecting the profitability of a downwind facility.

He searched for legal precedent but came up empty handed.

“There was basically nothing,” said Rule, now a law professor at Arizona State University. “And that’s not too surprising because, until about 30 years ago, wind didn’t have any commercial value.

“You can’t steal something that’s not worth anything.”

No ‘jackpot case’

A dearth of wind case law has led experts like DuVivier to examine state statutes and oil and gas law for answers on how wake effects could be addressed.

Wind developers, landowners and U.S. taxpayers will not be served by allowing wind law to remain the “wild west,” DuVivier and her colleagues argued in their research.

“The complexity of regulatory regimes, from state to local, and the competing interests of private landowners suggest that disputes between terrestrial, or land-based, wind farms will continue to be resolved through adversarial litigation,” they wrote in their January paper.

Minnesota is so far the only state that has attempted to regulate wind wakes, DuVivier said.

While the term “wake” does not appear in state statute, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission requires project siting that “ensures efficient use of the wind resources.” Some permit applications have incorporated studies of wake loss, DuVivier said.

Regulators could also borrow from oil and gas law, in which states have controlled factors like the space between wells, limiting the number of operators drawing from a pool of oil, she said.

Wind development is subject to no such standard.

“There’s a ton that’s not being accounted for,” said Yael Lifshitz, a researcher and lecturer at Columbia Law School.

Driven by her curiosity about when it is illegal to disrupt or steal a neighbor’s wind, Lifshitz recently completed a dissertation titled “Who Owns the Wind? Rethinking Our Renewables.”

She said she has spent the better part of the last decade searching for answers.

“I really haven’t found that jackpot case,” she said.

‘We need certainty’

Legal experts have tried to compare wind with sunlight, water and oil.

“Analogizing wind to water or oil would make it more convenient and much easier to craft laws for wind rights based on laws governing water rights and oil rights because these other laws already exist,” attorney Kimberly Diamond and wind industry professional Ellen Crivella argued in a 2011 paper.

“However, in the case of wind rights, the legal analogy to laws for substances or other items has to be one of appropriateness, rather than one of convenience with respect to existing laws.”

International and state solar laws, however, might offer a firmer foundation for a unified approach to wind turbine siting in the United States, Diamond and Crivella found.

DuVivier also argued in her research that a California law protecting solar panel owners against neighboring shade could serve as a framework for controlling wind wake effects.

Read the full article here:

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/06/12/welcome-to-the-wild-west...

Bill Seeks To Expand Master Limited Partnerships To Renewable Energy

Lawmakers have reintroduced a bipartisan, bicameral bill that would give clean energy projects access to a tax advantage currently available for fossil fuel projects.

U.S. Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and Ron Estes, R-Kan., call the Financing Our Energy Future Act a “straightforward, powerful modification” of the federal tax code that would help an emerging class of energy generation companies to form master limited partnerships (MLPs), which combine the funding advantages of corporations and the tax advantages of partnerships. The bill has been proposed several times in recent years.

“Clean energy technologies have made tremendous progress in the last several decades, and they deserve the same shot at success in the market as traditional energy projects have experienced through the federal tax code,” says Coons. “By updating the code, the bipartisan Financing Our Energy Future Act levels the playing field for a broad range of domestic energy sources – clean and traditional alike – to support the all-of-the-above energy strategy we need to power our country for generations to come.”

.

An MLP is a business structure that is taxed as a partnership but whose ownership interests are traded like corporate stock on a market. By statute, MLPs are currently available to investors in energy portfolios for oil, natural gas, coal extraction and pipeline projects, according to the lawmakers.

Under the proposal, newly eligible energy resources would include solar, wind, marine and hydrokinetic energy, fuel cells, energy storage, combined heat and power, biomass, waste heat to power, renewable fuels, biorefineries, energy efficient buildings, and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS).

Continue here:

https://nawindpower.com/bill-seeks-to-expand-master-limited-partner...

Views: 137

Comment

You need to be a member of Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine to add comments!

Join Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine

Comment by Penny Gray on June 16, 2019 at 7:22am

There's a HUGE disconnect between science and politicians.  We'll be paying the price for that over and over and over again.

Comment by Frank J. Heller, MPA on June 14, 2019 at 9:27am

So who owns the wind.....if it's like rain, that would be the government; opening no end of influence peddling and partisan corruptions. 

California has a 'SHADING' law....no trees over x height, no second story addition to the garage, no new business, ???

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

Not yet a member?

Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?

We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

 -- Mahatma Gandhi

"It's not whether you get knocked down: it's whether you get up."
Vince Lombardi 

Task Force membership is free. Please sign up today!

Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

© 2024   Created by Webmaster.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service