Wind Turbine Overhang Easement and Sharing Formula Clause

Summary

This clause is a wind turbine overhang easement and sharing formula clause, allowing a wind energy producer to compute royalty payments due when a wind turbine on the leased property overhangs an adjacent landowner's property. It compensates the adjacent landowner for use of their air rights. This clause contains practical guidance and drafting notes. Wind farms are large. They generally span hundreds or thousands of acres and may spread across many landowners' properties. And because individual wind turbines may be hundreds of feet tall, a wind turbine sitting on one landowner's property may have turbine blades that overhang an adjacent landowner's property. These adjacent landowners are entitled to compensation for the wind generator's use of the air rights above their physical properties. This is accomplished through an overhang easement and sharing formula that is built into a wind lease and signed by both landowners. When an overhang occurs, royalties are shared between the two landowners based on the formula contained in the clause. This is one of the most important provisions found in a wind lease, as the sharing clause grants the wind energy developer an irrevocable, non-exclusive easement over the air rights to the adjacent property owner's land. In return, it also provides a royalty payment to compensate the adjacent landowner for the easement. For a list of key resources covering major energy-related topics, see Summer Associate Resource Kit: Energy & Utilities. For a full listing of key content covering fundamental energy and utilities related topics, see Energy & Utilities Fundamentals Resource Kit. For additional information on negotiating a wind lease and related agreements, see First Year Associate Resource Kit: Energy & Utilities. For a full listing of related climate change content, see Climate Change Resource Kit. See also Wind Energy Leases, Wind Energy Leases and Related Agreements, and Wind Leasing Transactions Fundamentals. To review a wind lease, along with other documents closely related to a wind lease transaction, including wind lease easements, see Wind Energy Lease, Wind Easement (in Gross), Wind Lease and Grant of Easements Agreement, Site Rules Form (Wind Lease), and Wind Energy Due Diligence and Feasibility/Meteorological Studies Option Agreement.