The GWO participates in the book “Associativismo em Áreas Comunitárias” with a chapter on wind energy

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Damián Copena, researcher of the Galician Wind Observatory, has recently written a chapter in the book Associativismo em Áreas Comunitárias (Associativism in Communitary Areas), published by the association Federação Nacional dos Baldios-BALADI. The chapter, entitled “Activities promoted or interfering with the waste by means of a lease agreement: the wind farms”, analyzes the processes linked to wind energy in community lands. As in many areas of Galicia, the community properties of Portugal (common land) are open to many possible uses and economic activities developed within a multifunctional rationality. Among them is the increasingly relevant installation of wind farms to produce electricity. Portugal has witnessed rapid growth in wind power, which currently represents over 5,300 MW of installed power and about 2,800 operating wind turbines.

The text of this GWO researcher, who has already collaborated with the associations of commons of Portugal several times, shows how the income derived from wind energy that remains in rural areas can be maximized. The text presents different contractual alternatives between the parties and focuses on the most significant elements to be included in lease agreements between landowners and developers. This kind of organizations, the text concludes, must opt for increasingly available information and transparent processes to encourage the participation of all the members of the communities and attempt to achieve fairer results.
So far, the owners of the community lands with wind energy potential have had no chance to self-manage the endogenous resource (the wind) and develop wind farms on their own. The chapter concludes that a legislative change designing specific figures for the actual self-management of the wind resource, as is done in other territories, would be very positive. Self-management and a fairer distribution of the benefits of wind activity are issues associated to distributive justice, which must be advanced in the coming years. In the Observatory we pay special attention to this type of innovative process.