What a wind turbine decommissioning bond buys a landowner
A wind lease can run 30 years, long enough for the company that signed it to disappear before the turbines come down. A wind turbine decommissioning bond is money a company sets aside in advance, so a landowner does not pay to remove a dead turbine. Under Code of Federal Regulations Title 43, Section 2805.20, a turbine on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the agency that oversees public land, needs a bond of at least 20,000 dollars if it is rated at 1 megawatt or larger, a measure of power most turbines built today exceed. The only real, engineer produced figure for what removing a turbine costs, 44,474 dollars at a 59 turbine project in Wyoming County, New York, sits above that floor.
Federal minimum bond under Code of Federal Regulations Title 43, Section 2805.20, for a wind turbine on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The regulation names no automatic escalation formula above these 2 flat figures.
Show the numbers
| Under 1 megawatt | 10,000 |
| 1 megawatt or more | 20,000 |
How the amount gets set
Texas House Bill 2845, effective September 1, 2019, requires every wind lease to include financial assurance, proof that money exists to pay for removal, given to the landowner within 10 years of the turbines starting commercial operation, or when the lease ends. The amount equals removal cost minus salvage value, what the turbine is worth once removed, set and updated at least once every 5 years by a Texas licensed engineer.
The Stony Creek Wind Farm plan, filed with New York regulators for up to 59 turbines in Wyoming County, shows what that formula produces at a real project. An independent engineering firm estimated the project net cost after its first year at 44,474 dollars per turbine in the conservative case, where the turbine is worth only scrap once removed, for a total bond of 2,623,966 dollars. The plan requires that money be posted within 30 days of the first turbine foundation being poured, held for the life of the project, with the Town of Orangeville able to draw all of it if the bond lapses.
The deadline to post one keeps getting earlier
Montana Code Annotated, Title 75, Chapter 26, Part 3, Section 4, ties its bond deadline to when a facility started operating. A facility that began before January 1, 2007 has until year 16 to post a bond. One that started between then and October 1, 2025 has until year 15. Anything starting after that has only until year 12, 4 years sooner than the oldest facilities. The bond is not a flat number. It equals 100% of a cost the state calculates from the site and the salvage value at the time, and missing the deadline brings a penalty of up to 1,500 dollars, plus 1,500 dollars a day after a 30 day notice.
Under Montana Code Annotated, Title 75, Chapter 26, Part 3, Section 4. The middle row covers a facility beginning operation on or after January 1, 2007 and before October 1, 2025.
Show the numbers
| Started before 2007 | 16 |
| Started 2007 to 2025 | 15 |
| Starts after October 2025 | 12 |
What landowners and companies say about it
A 2019 hearing on Nebraska Legislative Bill 700 would have required wind facilities to remove all equipment and restore land to greenfield condition, meaning land as usable as before the turbines went in. John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, testified about how landowners feel under the existing bond rule.
I'm not aware of landowners that are unhappy with those provisions.
John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. Source 5.
David Levy, a representative of BHE Renewables, testified about what the bill would cost.
On a 200 megawatt wind energy project, which is kind of the average these days in Nebraska, this would add approximately 5,000,000 dollars of decommissioning expense.
David Levy, representative of BHE Renewables. Source 5.
The committee took no action on the bill that day, and no source found for this article says whether it later passed.