Agent-Based modeling of decisions and developer actions in wind farm landowner contract acceptance

Abstract

This paper presents an agent-based model to investigate interactions between wind farm developers and landowners. Wind farms require hundreds of square miles of land for development and developers typically interact with landowners to lease land for construction and operations. Landowners sign land lease contracts without knowing the turbine layout, which affects aesthetics of property as well as value of the lease contract. Having a turbine placed on one’s land is much more lucrative than alternative land uses, but landowners must sign over the use of their land without knowing whether they will receive this financial benefit or not. This process, typically referred to as “Landowner Acquisition,” is highly uncertain for both stakeholders—a source stated up to 50% of wind projects fail due to landowner acquisition issues. We present an agent-based model to study the landowner acquisition period with unique decision-making characteristics for nine landowners and a developer. Citizen participation is crucial to the acceptance of wind farms; thus, we use past studies to quantify three actions a developer can take to influence landowners: (1) community engagement meetings, (2) preliminary environmental studies, and (3) sharing the wind turbine layout with the landowner. Results show how landowner acceptance rates can change over time based on what actions the developer takes. While still in the “proof of concept” stage, this model provides a framework for quantifying wind stakeholder interactions and potential developer actions. Suggestions for how to validate the framework in the future are included in the discussion.