Good practice:

Joint development of wind farm projects

One way to encourage acceptance of wind farm projects is to enable local authorities to take ownership of the energy source, optimise the financial benefits for the interested areas, and offer support to local authorities involved in public and citizen-focused projects.
With these objectives, a joint development system for a wind farm project in Normandy was set up and implemented via the signature of 3 agreements:
- Funding agreement between a group of investors, SIEGE27 and two public-private partnerships (to act in a transparent manner and to assume the development’s financial risks).
- Partnership agreements between SIEGE, municipalities and intercommunalities (financial risks borne by the group, dividends paid to the municipalities, etc.)
- Partnership agreement between SIEGE, the wind energy developer West Energies and the public-private partnership SIPEnR (a tool to advise local authorities in the implementation of citizen-focused renewable energy projects).
Municipalities become a signatory of the lease to ensure the successful completion of the project, by committing to pay the dividends to the area and by bearing the financial risk on behalf of local authorities while providing them with access to governance.
Possibility of direct benefits for the project’s citizens by purchasing bonds via a crowdfunding platform or by access to governance via public investment funds such as Energie Partagée Investissement or via the creation of a social enterprise.

- dev. phase: ≈ €400 to 500k (40% SIEGE; 30% p-p partnerships and 30% developer)
- funding phase: ≈ several millions in equity (40% SIEGE; 30% public-private partnerships; 30% developer)
Human resources:
- dev. phase: SIEGE: ≈ 70 days
- p-p partnerships: ≈ 50 days
- Developer : ≈ 200 days

After the first case, other 5 projects were developed with this approach, through agreements among municipalities, intercommunalities and SIEGE27, demonstrating local authorities’ interest in this way of working. Some of them would not have taken this route without the support of SIEGE because of a lack of human, legal and financial resources. The partnerships with different developers (2 in place, 2 in progress) of this model demonstrate their interest in this type of joint development.

The discussions with the developers + consequent adjustments can take a long time in the short term (the developer has to change the way the project is developed to include local authorities as well as a public institution to share the governance of the project) but are constructive in the long term

In France, each county has an energy federation (Syndicat d’énergie) which can decide to support the local authorities with this type of joint development. Otherwise, a ten-million national fund EnRCiT financed by private and public institutions and created for the financing of renewable energy projects implemented or governed by citizens as well as local authorities can finance the development step.
For other European Regions, the good practice could be implemented if a public institution takes responsibility to launch this kind of joint partnership.
This good practice could be transferred to other Regions with the creation of a national fund to take responsibility if no local public institutions are existing or able to do so. Such fund could be financed by other public institutions, as well as by companies or citizens.