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The economic benefits of wind energy can be significant, especially for the communities in which wind projects are sited.
Building a wind energy project
- results in investment in local businesses and infrastructure,
- creates construction and operations jobs at the wind project site, and
- increases local tax revenues.
Benefits of Wind Energy over Fossil Fuel Generation
| Benefit | Wind Energy Generation | Fossil Fuel Generation |
| Flow of Money | Flow of benefits goes into the local community because developers pay local landowners for wind rights, and tax revenues and construction jobs stay in the community. | Payments for oil, gas, or coal end up out of the region or country. |
| Utilities and Energy Consumers | Using a renewable fuel helps hedge against volatile fuel prices and the uncertain cost of complying with future environmental regulations. | Fossil fuel prices can dramatically increase over time. These price increases cause utility rates to increase accordingly. |
| Environmental Effects | Wind turbines emit no pollutants or greenhouse gases. Avian issues can be mitigated with careful siting. | Generation plants that use fossil fuels emit greenhouse gases and pollutants into the surrounding communities. |
| Multi-use Compatibility | Wind energy is compatible with agricultural activities, and can act as an additional revenue stream to keep farmland in production. | Land used for fossil fuel plants cannot be used other purposes. In fact, property values close to such plants are likely to suffer. |
Unique Advantages of Community Wind
- Concentration of the economic benefits of wind development in the local community.
- Useful tool to gauge whether a site has potential for future expansion.
- It can acts as a launch pad for streamlined future expansion of wind development on a given site.
- Rapid scale-up is valuable in today’s political environment where policies facilitating wind development change dramatically from year to year.
- Feasible in certain areas where large-scale utility wind development would be inappropriate due to environmental or community sensitivities.
- Community-based investors may settle for a lower return on equity than commercial investors - thereby improving project economics.
- Distributed generation is less vulnerable to disruption than large, centralized power plants.
- May be able to use existing infrastructure for the interconnection.
- Widespread geographic distribution can offset the variable production of each individual project and maintain a steadier level of productivity overall. When the wind is calm at one project site, it is likely blowing at others.
