I lived in a town where someone wanted to put in a wind farm (by renting space from landowners).
At their presentation to the town, I realized the business model was a chain of ownership:
- Someone buys the property rights, selling that to
- Someone builds the turbines, selling that to
- Someone operates the turbines for actual electricity production, selling that to
- Someone else takes over operation, selling that to
- Someone takes on the end-of-life stage dismantling turbines beyond expected viable maintenance period, selling that to
- Someone scrapping the equipment removing it from the land, selling that to
- Someone reclaiming the land.
The incentive is how you can make a buck selling a stage to the next stage owner. Those getting the turbines built don’t care what it produces, just how fast the builders can sell out.
Around here, it was German owned power companies "harvesting the subsidies", and absentee landowners collecting the cash while urinating on their neighbors.
Fortunately, we were able to stop any more of these in our county by forcing them to provide a "Property Value Guarantee" and offsets from non-leaseholders homes to 2500', instead of the 1000' the industry claims is safe.