Renewable Energy Projects
New Energy of the Future
Renewable energy projects in rural & remote settings have become microcosms of the market economy: driven from both the top and the bottom, from need and innovation. It is expected, then, that funding for these undertakings should be found both from foreign investment and local input.
As technologies become more advanced, though, the development of projects is propelled more from the corporation employing the technology, and less from local sources. Community inputs come into play with conventional renewable energy systems, smaller-scale initiatives, and pilot projects.
Rural investors have a variety of options available to invest in alternative energy infrastructure, while rural residents have a variety of income options.
Wind farms have been a boon to many farmers in North America. Farmers are paid significant amounts for each wind turbine located on their properties. These fees range from several hundred to several thousand dollars per turbine. In the USA, three firms have been created by rural investors and entrepreneurs to build turbine blades, in a variety of sizes from 1.5kw to multi-mw units.
Biodiesel is the mainstay for farmer income, with many plants owned by producer cooperatives or local investors, while the feedstocks are produced locally. Similarly, ethanol cooperatives and joint ventures have put income in producer and local investor pockets.
Often, when a business is looking to establish in a rural community, it will scout out the community, looking for, among other things, local investors and partners. If infrastructure and resources are in place, outside investors will eagerly join forces with the locals.
One of the tools that is slowly being adopted by rural investors is to establish hybrid types of business incubators, focusing on renewable, alternative energy and emerging environmental technologies. These incubators are set up either jointly with community development agencies, or privately. The program’s keys to success are less focused on low rent than they are on ensuring that essential business infrastructure is in place, including trained and specialized employee base, internet technologies, cheap and available electrical power, expansion capacity, and support business services such as welders, machinists, electronics technicians, etc.
Local entrepreneurs looking to establish a renewable energy operation in the community may turn to local capital pool corporations – structures that have been empowered by provincial and state legislation to enable groups of like minded, common-interest people join together without facing the gauntlet of rigid Securities Commission regulations. Local partners, family & friends and business acquaintances all may constitute this capital pool corporation, without the requirement of issue=ing prospectus, etc.
Other options available to local investors include partnering with larger, related business interests, developing of an affiliation with suppliers and buyers of the energy service.
Even at the pilot project or exploratory level, rural investors have access to a wealth of research funding. Commonly in the Midwestern USA, universities partner with local interested parties to explore and evaluate emerging systems and technologies, that later may emerge in those communities as successful businesses.
Key to starting and operating any of the renewable energy initiatives in rural settings is the need to develop effective methods of cooperation, since the vast majority of rural investors do not have the capacity (either financial or technical) to start and grow a competitive energy business. Unfortunately, it is the individual, independent, pioneer spirit of rural residents that inhibits that cooperation, except in times of crisis. Indeed, given the current business climate worldwide, those rural investors should be looking at new opportunities through the eyes of the pioneer, and consider that their economic base is, indeed, in crisis.
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