re: I have someone trying to pitch me on Solar Farms...

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I would be a little skeptical of these solar companies. What happens when the government subsidies run out and they go bankrupt. They walk away and you’re left with all this junk on your land and no money coming in. Besides these panels can’t be just thrown away, they have to go to a hazardous site for disposal. Also wait til the meth heads discover all that wire running everywhere!

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Or a hale storm or hurricane pays the field a visit.

They pay a frick ton to lease but you don’t come across as someone who won’t get fricked in the contract. So for your sake I would steer clear.

You could enroll it in a carbon offset bank. Makes sense, especially for swampy areas where you can't really log anyway. Plus, the pulp market has gone to shite and the chip and saw isn't what it used to be.

It’s not really a huge deal though. The half arse projects without them can’t get any financing so they never get off the ground.

Oh wow I missed that gem.

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has been very beneficial to my clients and future removal and remediation language is a must in these agreements. If the company goes bankrupt how can this be assured? Not arguing, asking. Appreciate the legal insigh

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Spot on. It can’t be enforced or assured and the clauses aren’t worth the ink used to write them if and when you need to go to battle. Think of all the orphan oil wells around jake leg companies walk away from with a simple entity name change in some instances with zero consequences.

LINK


Research what they do when a hail storm destroys them all. I don’t know if insurance covers that or if the contracts to install would exclude removing and clean up or replacement. I think there are similar problems with the giant wind turbines as well.

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Make sure your contract has them bond the cleanup and remediation cost.

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Yes. And have it re-upped every 5 years based on market cost for cleanup and remediation.

1. Any business built on government subsidy, is very likely to experience a change in government policy that wipes out the subsidy.

2. I sure would run the conversion calculations to understand what the economics would be for an unsubsidized operate to validate the risk taken

3. The probability of the install operator going bankrupt, and leaving the property owner with a many million dollar clean up has to be dealt with. A bond may look good at contract signing, but you can be sure that when economics are failing the bond payments are quietly discontinued.

4. Value of the produced electricity to the land owner is an incredible difficult task to understand. I spent a couple days trying understand Texas ERCOT's method of valuation for power purchase and sale. I could not get their system. A little guy with a couple hundred acres will have no comprehension if he is paid appropriately .
So the little guy negotiates a flat rate. How does he adjust for inflation, onstream performance, subsidy change. Who do you adjust it with, the pitch man, distributor, aggregator. Dow is looking at a small nuclear rx cogen plant at sea drift texas. If they were able to get a lock on Ercot's pricing and were able to run the project's operation revenue statement to show a profit ,good for them. But the pricing technology will be a much larger factor in program success, than the installed nuclear technology

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says it's more lucrative than timber

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well the timber markets suck, so that's probably right, but you can make more keeping it as pasture instead of timber also