Irish see green in wind farms: Mainstream invests in two Lee County wind farm projects
SUBLETTE – While the Obama administration touts the environmental benefits of green energy, an Irish energy company has invested locally in two wind projects, hoping to see a different kind of green – dollar bills.
Dublin-based Mainstream Renewable Power bought the two wind farms in Lee County, and a third farm in Boone County, last Thursday from Bruce and Joyce Papiech of Sublette.
The company expects to spend $1.69 billion over a 4-year period developing the three projects, which will ride the tailwinds of Obama’s goal of having 25 percent of the nation’s electricity come from renewable energy by 2025.
Eddie O’Connor is co-founder and CEO of Mainstream Renewable Power.
“The U.S. market is of strategic importance to Mainstream, and the scale of the opportunity is strongly reflected in President Obama’s economic stimulus package, ...” he said in a written statement. He cited federal funding in the amount of $15 billion for renewable energy programs, and $56 billion over the next 10 years in grants and tax breaks for clean energy projects.
Locally, the more advanced of the two projects in Lee County is Shady Oaks, a 60-turbine farm that should be completed next year along Shady Oaks Road near the intersection with Interstate 39, near the border of Brooklyn and Wyoming townships.
It is projected to produce 120 megawatts of electricity, or enough energy to power roughly 30,000 homes.
Shady Oaks is expected to generate roughly $1 million worth of annual tax revenue for the county.
It also is expected to employ about 120 people during next year’s construction process and offer about a dozen long-term jobs when the site begins operating, according to a Mainstream Renewable Power media statement.
The other Lee County site is a 467-megawatt farm called the Green River project. That won’t start construction until sometime next year and will take several years to complete.
That’s because the project would be significantly larger with “hundreds” of turbines when completed at an undisclosed location, Bruce Papiech said.
Although the Papieches declined to reveal the value of the deal, they said it would create millions in tax revenue, with a tax rate for wind turbines in Lee County of roughly $9,000 per megawatt.
“So you’re going to look at roughly another [$1] million dollars of revenue when the Shady Oaks Project is built, and almost $4 million when the other project is built,” Bruce Papiech said.
Papiech said he and his wife were content to sell the turbines to Mainstream because of the group’s dedication to preserving local culture.
“I mean they’re very, very conscious of landowners’ opinions, and place a high value on the land and how it’s treated,” he said. “And that was very important to us.”
