Maine counties chafe at lower-than-expected payments from wind farms

EXCERPTS:

By Bill Trotter | Bangor Daily News | April 8, 2021

For nearly two decades, commercial wind farms have been touted in Maine as a way to generate electricity without pollution, and as a way rural locales in Maine can generate revenue for themselves by hosting turbines worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But several counties and towns are finding out they are getting less revenue out of the wind projects than they had expected when they were wooed in the 2000s and 2010s by developers looking to erect turbines several hundred feet tall along local remote, elevated ridgelines. In some cases, the developers are arguing that recent advancements in wind turbine technology have made newer models so efficient that older, less efficient turbines erected nearly a decade or more ago have lost much of their taxable value.

In Franklin County, Maine Revenue Services granted a tax abatement on the Kibby Wind Power project that last month forced county officials to return $187,844 in tax-increment financing, or TIF, payments to Helix Maine Wind, which owns the 44-turbine wind farm.

In Hancock County, state officials granted an abatement to another wind farm, TerraForm-owned Bull Hill Wind, that is forcing the county to return $17,342 it had received in TIF payments last year for the 19 turbines erected in that county’s unorganized territory in 2012.

In Kingsbury Plantation in Piscataquis County, local officials agreed to reduce taxes on part of the Bingham Wind project by $23,000 for three years in a row, from 2018 through 2020. The firm that currently owns and operates the wind farm also sought and was granted a tax abatement in the nearby Somerset County town of Bingham, where 11 of Bingham Wind’s 56 turbines were erected in 2016.

In counties that have TIF agreements with wind farm operators in their unorganized territory, all the tax revenue generated off the turbines and related equipment – which normally would be kept by the state – is divided between the developer and the county by percentages that often change over the 30-year term of the agreement.

Somerset County officials were disappointed enough in the revenue they were getting through their TIF agreement from Bingham Wind, which includes 24 turbines in that county’s unorganized territory, that in 2017 they filed a Freedom of Access Act request with Maine Revenue Services to try to find out how the state determined its valuation for the development, which the state agency does for all development projects in Maine’s unorganized territory.

Maine Revenue Services denied the request, saying that the information was proprietary to the developer, according to David Spencer, Somerset County’s UT coordinator. The county took the case to court in an attempt to force the state to disclose its formula, but lost the case.

“We never got permission to see how the state’s value was established,” Spencer said, adding that the county was opposed to the project but pursued a TIF agreement with the developer anyway, figuring some revenue out of it would be better than nothing.

“When we finally got the checks, they didn’t live up to what we had been told we would get,” Spencer said. “Plus, the turbines are an eyesore.”...................

................Stacey Fitts, Maine asset manager for Onward, said Wednesday he could not comment on whatever Somerset County’s TIF revenue expectations may have been in 2016, because the county negotiated that agreement with now-defunct SunEdison. He said Onward reached “amicable” valuation settlements with Kingsbury and Bingham after the firm questioned the methodology the two municipalities used to determine the value of the turbines.................

................Scott Adkins, Hancock County’s administrator, said after the meeting that such a quick depreciation in value for the turbines “worries me.” If the equipment continues to rapidly become obsolete, the county’s TIF revenue also could rapidly shrink, he said.

He said state officials have suggested they might change their valuation method to base their estimates on income, rather than the market price of the equipment being used. If this happens, and if the turbines become so obsolete that TerraForm decides to shut them down, they wouldn’t generate any income at all, which could result in the county getting no TIF funds out of the facility.....................

...................TerraForm officials also did not respond Wednesday to an emailed request for comment. In addition to Bull Hill, TerraForm also owns and operates wind farms in the Aroostook County town of Mars Hill, the neighboring Penobscot County towns of Lincoln and Lee, and at Stetson Mountain in Washington County, but local officials said this week they have not been notified of any abatement requests in connection with those developments.

Please read the full article at:

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2021/04/08/maine-counties-chafe-at-...

Deal on offshore wind jobs highlights tensions with Maine fishermen  

By Tux Turkel, Staff Writer | Portland Press Herald | April 7

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2021/04/08/deal-on-offshore-wind-jo...

************************************* 


Fair Use Notice: This website may reproduce or have links to copyrighted material the use of which has not been expressly authorized by the copyright owner. We make such material available, without profit, as part of our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, economic, scientific, and related issues. It is our understanding that this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided by law. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Views: 268

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 Willem Post on April 8, 2021 at 5:12pm

These wind towns have to form an association to advance their interests in a UNITED manner.

The state bureaucrats and legislators cannot be trusted to help the towns; they get bought by the rich wind  system owners, as part of the RE fight GW mantras.

 

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