Having legal and long-term rights over the land on which you plan to build your energy project, is essential but often overlooked. If you are the land owner of the planned site then this should be an easy step to complete. If you are developing a community project or own only part of the land for the proposed site, your main focus now is to agree an Exclusivity Agreement and an Option Agreement.

Investing your time and efforts in the exclusivity agreement and the option to lease agreement at an early stage is time and resource well spent. As stated, if you are the sole land owner and developer, this will not be an issue but if you are one of a number of land owners, representing a community group or a land owner working with a community group, agreeing the terms of project officially and thoroughly at an early stage is essential.

An Exclusivity Agreement allow the developer time to investigate the feasibility of the project further and then present a concrete proposal to the land owner. The agreement would commit the land owner to work exclusively with the group for a predetermined and fixed period. It should also give the opportunity to enter into a more formal Option to Lease Agreement with the land owner if it appears that a viable project can be developed on the land. The advantage of an exclusivity agreement is simplicity and therefore low legal fees until the benefits of the site are further assessed.

When you have established the feasibility of the project and if it looks good, you will need to put an Option to Lease Agreement in place. This means that you as the developer have the right for a period of three or four years, to take a lease over the land required for the wind turbine bases, roads, and the substation and to build the project. This provides the necessary time for you to secure the necessary planning permission for the project and work out how to finance it.

The eventual Lease Agreement will be signed once it is certain that construction of the project can go ahead, i.e. planning is obtained. The Lease Agreement will give the project developer appropriate access and usage rights over the land and will set out the annual rental payment that must be made to the land owner.