Falling commodity prices have taken a big bite out of Colorado farm and ranch incomes, but lease payments from wind turbines are helping to cushion the blow for some rural landowners.
Colorado landowners received $9 million in such lease payments last year, part of the $222 million that wind farms paid nationwide, according to the American Wind Energy Association, or AWEA.
“That puts Colorado in the top 10 nationally,” trade group spokesman Evan Vaughan said.
Texas, the top generator of wind power, also is the top state for those payments, followed by Iowa, California, Oklahoma, Illinois and Kansas.
There were 26 states where landowners as a group received more than $1 million last year. About 70 percent of turbines are in low-income, rural areas.
Logan County, with 700 turbines churning out electricity, is a hub for wind generation in the state, said Trae Miller, the northeastern Colorado county’s executive director of economic development.
“They boost the valuation of our tax base and provide additional income streams for our farmers and agricultural producers who are suffering with commodity prices being down,” Miller said.
In 2014, about 13.6 percent of Colorado’s energy was produced by wind turbines. Generating capacity reached 2,992 megawatts that same year.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday that Colorado farmers and ranchers made $351 million less in personal income in 2015 than they did in 2014, the biggest drop of any sector in the state.
Wind turbines tend to locate on lower-yielding agricultural ground in the county. And while they require periodic maintenance, once running, turbines are much less disruptive than petroleum wells or solar arrays, Miller said.
“No need to empty tanks into a truck and haul things out,” he said. “They are self-sustaining.”
Also lease payments are stable and don’t have the fluxuations seen in oil and gas royalties.
Wind generation provides a secondary benefit to rural communities, in that it saves about 226 gallons of water per person in the U.S. each year, the AWEA said.
Water that isn’t going to cool power plants can stay on farms, putting less pressure on farmers to sell their water rights and abandon farming.
Water rights sales have had devastating consequences on farming activity in Crowley County and other rural counties.
And while wind turbine lease payments aren’t huge in the grand scheme of things, they do make a big difference for individuals farmers.
“We had come to a point where it no longer made financial sense to keep the property even with its vast sentimental value,” said Jason Wilson of Calhan in a statement included with the report. “The wind farm balanced the financial viability with the sentimental value, allowing the family farm to continue to be passed on to the next generation.”
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410, asvaldi@denverpost.com or @aldosvaldi
