Wind land owners receive less than 750 euros per MW

• by OEGA
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Once again the Galician Wind Observatory discovers that the rural environment is left out of a fair ecological transition process in which it plays a relevant role. By contrary, companies outside the rural environment that develop these wind turbines locate these infrastructures in territories with great wind potential, transform landscapes, and carry out succulent businesses, leaving behind them ridiculously useless terrain in rural areas to confront the negative trends cornering it.
This case represents the worst results, by far, of the implementation of wind farms in Galicia (apart from expropriations). Not even 1,000 euro per year per MW…..

Wind farm data

After 10 years of bureaucratic processing, the Serra das Penas wind farm was launched in 2019 by the company Enel Green Power España, S.L. (EGPE). Its characteristics are as follows:

• Location: Paradela, province of Lugo.
• Budget: almost 30 million €.
• 21 wind turbines of 2 MW
• The turbines have a tower height of 93 meters and 160 meters to the tip of the blade. The sweep diameter is 114 m.
• Production in 2020: 116,923 MWh
• Estimated turnover of the wind farm in 2020: 4,782,598.85 euro

 

Who is EGPE?

The wind farm, admitted for processing in 2004, had been authorized in 2009 to the company Endesa Cogeneración y Renovables. Its Sectorial Project of Supramunicipal Incidence was published in September 2009 consequent to the Agreement adopted by the Consello da Xunta de Galicia in its meeting of 30 July 2009; thereby, the sectorial project of supramunicipal incidence of the aforementioned wind farm was definitively approved.
In 2010, the rights to the wind farm passed on to Enel Green Power España, S.L. Other additional modifications occurred during this period affecting total power, wind turbine model and the declaration of public utility.
Enel Green Power España, S.L. is 100% owned by Endesa, of which ENEL IBERIA, SL owns 70.1% which is in turn fully owned by ENEL SPA. The Italian State owns 23.6% of this latter company.

How EGPE operated in Serra das Penas

The processing of this park began in 2004. For a number of reasons, this procedure took almost 15 years to complete. The company requested, and obtained, the declaration of Public Utility of the wind farm, giving rise to expropriation proceedings. GWO still has no knowledge of the number of lands expropriated or the fair prices achieved.
During 2018, the company launched what we may call “Land Appropriation Operation” (LAO).
What is LAO? The company designed a business strategy to pay the rural owners as little as possible, and it used at least two levers to this end.

• First, it made use of the experience accumulated during similar procedures in other Galician territories.
• Second, it sent one of its technicians to the territory, responding by the name of Agapito (fictitious name), to finally launch the LAO operation.

Agapito visited all the owners. As a good negotiator, he held multiple individual meetings in the homes of each of the owners. He returned to each house as many times as necessary. He never held a collective meeting with all or part of the owners. He began to know each of the families, their names, what they lived on, the main problems of each household, the names of the grandparents and grandchildren, etc. He always asked about the family. He would go to the village bar, and attend church events. Of course, Agapito was releasing the information that interested him at the right moment, whilst calibrating the content of his messages according to what he had previous learned about the owner’s socioeconomic situation. Thus, he was getting signatures on documents that he quickly reported to his immediate bosses. They made bets on how long it would take Agapito to achieve the objective of getting the most contracts signed with the lowest possible amounts. This is how Agapito went from walk to walk, pasture to pasture, fireplace to fireplace…

Conclusion

Albeit with the information limitations mentioned above, the final result known by the GWO is: less than 750 euros per year were paid in 2020 for the occupation of lands now having a wind turbine nailed on them, i.e., occupied by EGPE in full ownership. According to our own estimate, each turbine produced 227,742.80 euro that year. In other words, Agapito achieved what no one else had achieved before him: the signing of a contract in which the owners of the lands occupied in full ownership receive 0.65% of the estimated turnover.
Agapito went to another territory. He continues to use his negotiating prowess to ensure his business can develop wind farms occupying agrarian lands for which defenseless rural communities get paid a pittance. Can this be called a fair energy transition?