Solar Lease

Summary

This template is a solar lease entered into between a landowner, as landlord, and a solar energy developer, as tenant, and allows the tenant to utilize the leased premises to build a solar facility. This template includes practical guidance and drafting notes. Solar facility development is land intensive and often occurs in rural settings over large tracts of farmland, cropland, or ranchland. Before a solar facility developer may build a solar facility, it must first obtain a solar lease of the land necessary to build the development. This does not only include the land beneath the solar panels themselves, but also the land needed to build maintenance facilities, roads, workshops, power substations, and power lines. Because in the vast majority of states the surface holder's (here, the tenant's) property interests are subservient to the holder of any mineral interests, a solar facility developer tenant will want to have the landlord and any mineral rights owners sign an accommodation agreement, giving the tenant certain rights to develop a solar facility despite existing mineral operations. Additionally, the solar facility developer tenant will want the landlord and any mineral rights owners to sign an easement to allow the developer access to the leased property for access and maintenance. These agreements should be signed concurrently with the solar lease itself. For more information, see MB Renewable Energy Law and Policy § 7.02 and Energy Law and Transactions § 71.02. For additional guidance, please see Solar Lease Letter of Intent, Solar Leases: Lease Term Clause Video, and Solar Energy and Battery Storage Development Use Clause. For more information on surface use of mineral lease property and landowner rights, see Surface Use and Landowner Rights. For more information on surface use agreements and how to negotiate them, see Surface Use Agreements. For a template example of an accommodation agreement, see Accommodation Agreement (Surface and Mineral Interests). For a template example of an easement for access and maintenance, see Easement for Access and Maintenance Agreement (Energy).