Can wind farms just be abandoned?

7,317 Views | 35 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by ClickClack
richardag
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mts6175 said:

CanyonAg77 said:

https://www.foley.com/en/insights/publications/2019/08/texas-requirements-wind-energy-land-leases

Quote:

The Texas legislature recently passed House Bill 2845 modifying Section 301 of Title 6 of the Texas Utilities Code to impose statutory decommissioning requirements on any person ("Wind Developer") that leases property from a landowner for the operation of a wind power facility. The new statute affects all wind power facility lease agreements entered into on or after September 1, 2019. Such lease agreements must provide that Wind Developer is responsible for the removal of wind power facilities from the landowner's property at the end of the lease term...

Wind Developer's decommissioning responsibilities that must be included in lease agreements consist of (i) clearing, cleaning and removal of each wind turbine generator, including towers, pad-mount transformers, and all liquids, greases and other similar substances; (ii) for each tower foundation, pad-mount transformer and buried cable that is installed, cleaning, clearing and removal to a depth of at least three feet below the surface grade; (iii) filling any hole or cavity that is created by the removal process with the same type of topsoil as the predominant topsoil found on the property; and (iv) at the request of the landowner, removing any road constructed by Wind Developer on the property and, if reasonable, removing all rocks at least one foot in diameter that are excavated during the removal process to ensure that the land is returned to a tillable state.

In addition, lease agreements must require Wind Developer to secure, not later than the earlier of the 10th anniversary of the commercial operations date or termination of the lease agreement, evidence of adequate financial assurances conforming with the statute for all decommissioning efforts. Acceptable forms of financial assurances include, (i) a guaranty from a parent company with minimum investment grade credit rating, (ii) a letter of credit, (iii) a bond, or (iv) any other form of financial assurance that is accepted by the landowner.


10 years to secure a bond?????? How 'bout that gets done on the front side before breaking ground? What a dumb move.
It's OK, the Federal Government will fund the cleanup actions required. More tax breaks on their way.
ClickClack
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AG
This is dumb. I build commercial wind farms and the useful life is 25+ and we will either install new turbines on existing foundations or de-construct.

More likely to "re-power" as we are already doing now.
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