WIND & SOLAR DECEPTIONS

What to look for when industrial wind and solar companies come to town

Wind and solar energy companies sometimes use questionable or deceptive practices:

  • To persuade landowners to lease their property for industrial energy production.

  • To convince local governments and elected officials the installations will be a low-impact financial bonanza.

  • To convince people they’ll be unaffected by or barely notice these industrial energy compounds.

  • To convince communities these projects are “crucial for our energy future” and the greater good.

These tactics exploit financial vulnerabilities, misrepresent benefits, and downplay risks. 

We’re seeing many of these in Fayette County right now.

Misrepresenting economic benefits

  • Exaggerating financial promises: Wind and solar companies often overstate the financial benefits of leasing land, such as claiming higher-than-realistic lease payments or promising long-term, stable income while hiding terms that allow renegotiation or payment reductions.

  • Hiding costs: They may fail to disclose potential costs to landowners, such as increased taxes, reduced property values, new ineligibility for some farm subsidies, or legal fees if disputes arise.

  • Suggesting risks are minimal. According to FireTrace International, “Wind turbine fires account for 10–30% of all catastrophic wind turbine accidents” and “91% of incidents are never reported.” So you can’t trust the numbers from an industrial wind company. Illinois has 50–54 tornadoes each year, and an average annual lightning count over 7 million (130 per square mile). These are not trivial risks.

  • Leaving demolition and clean-up terms vague. Will they dismantle turbines in sections or take them down with a controlled explosion, spreading a corona of debris across the field? Who will clean up fiberglass contamination and to what standard? What will happen to the 300+ gallons of oil, hydraulic fluid, and lubricants in the nacelle?

  • VIDEO & ARTICLE: Cedar Co. Family in turmoil after explosive turbine demolition scatters debris across farm (2024, Cedar County, Iowa)

    BLOG: Fibreglass from shredded wind turbine blades renders farming land useless (Iowa, 2024)

    “[After two turbines on one farm were struck by lightning and burned] The company has removed the first turbine but has not cleaned up any of the debris. It is now completely worked into the ground. Because it was windy and the wind changed direction the next day, the second turbine spread debris over at least 300 acres, which included 3 neighboring farms. They now have a cornfield that is growing fast and full of wind turbine fiberglass. They bale corn stalks to feed their cows. She didn’t know what they would have done if this had happened in October as they would not have been able to feed those cows. As it is, they can’t graze them on land that is heavily contaminated with fiberglass.”

    __

    “After the first fire, the wind company contracted with a clean-up crew to clean up the damage. It was three people with three shop vacs to clean up the “heavily contaminated” areas over an area of around 20 acres for three days. Yes, you read that right. Three people, three shop vacs, three days, to clean up around 20 acres of land. They have no intention of cleaning any of the land that is less heavily contaminated and plan to just leave the debris in the fields.”

    “No cleanup plan has been made yet for the second turbine, and they are not allowed to talk to the cleanup company anymore.”

Downplaying land and environmental impacts

  • Ignoring wildlife and ecosystem damage: Wind and solar companies may omit or trivialize the impacts on local wildlife, such as bird and bat mortality, habitat destruction, or soil degradation.

  • Failing to address hazards, accident cleanup, and soil contamination. Gearbox oil leaks are common. Fiberglass contamination from wind turbine destruction (whether acts of god, self destruction, or planned demolition) can contaminate hundreds of acres of land, including neighboring farms, making them unusable for food crops, livestock feed, or grazing.

  • Providing inadequate fire mitigation: Rural, volunteer fire departments are unequipped to deal with a Combined Materials + Chemical fire burning 450 feet overhead. Additionally, they’re not allowed within the fall radius of the turbine, for safety reasons. Therefore, the standard protocol is to wait for the turbine fire to burn out.

    So if a tornado or lightning causes a turbine fire, which happened to three (3) different turbines on one (1) Iowa farmer’s land, expect to watch flaming debris rain down on your land from 450 up in the air—and pray it isn’t windy.

Using high-pressure sales tactics

  • False “limited-time offers”: Wind and solar companies often pressure landowners to sign quickly, claiming spots are limited or suggesting that neighbors have already signed on (even if they haven’t). This is happening in Fayette County—don’t fall for it.

  • Legal jargon and complexity: They present overly complex contracts, knowing many landowners may not fully understand the terms, implications, and pitfalls without costly legal counsel.

Exploiting community trust

  • Using local "ambassadors": Industrial wind and solar companies often hire or incentivize trusted community members to promote their projects, creating a false sense of endorsement. This can include saying or implying neighboring landowners have signed contracts when they have not.

  • Dividing communities to conquer them: They frequently offer better deals to some landowners to create rifts between neighbors, making it harder for opposition to form.

Failing to address property value declines

  • Denying property devaluation: They frequently claim wind turbines or solar farms won’t reduce property values, despite evidence that industrial energy projects reduce home values 25-45%, have made some homes unsellable, and deter potential buyers within a two-mile radius.

Downplaying quality-of-life impacts

  • Trivializing noise and visual pollution: Wind and solar companies may assure landowners that wind turbine noise, flicker effects, and aesthetic degradation are negligible, despite evidence to the contrary.

Undermining opposition and oversight

  • Downplaying local resistance: Wind and solar companies may attempt to discredit or dismiss concerns from neighbors or community organizations.

  • Influencing regulators: They may lobby to loosen zoning laws or bypass local ordinances, making it harder for communities to reject projects.

    This happened in Illinois in 2023. Illinois legislators and Governor Pritzker used House Bill 4412 to greenwash eminent domain. The bill took away county authority to protect residents from predatory industrial energy practices: prohibiting zoning and contract restrictions on wind turbine approvals, siting, setback, timelines, compensation for property devaluation, and community input.

    Instead of protecting YOU from property devaluation, noise, and other quality-of-life impacts, politicians passed cookie-cutter legislation written by industry lobbyists that lets commercial energy companies ruin our countrysides.

Hiding long-term land use implications

  • Burying decommissioning responsibilities: They may fail to disclose that landowners might bear the cost of decommissioning turbines or solar panels when they become obsolete or unprofitable—especially if a company has a “convenient bankruptcy” or passes the buck to an unresponsive third-, fourth- or fifth-party subcontractor who won’t answer your calls.

  • Long-term land restrictions: Contracts often include clauses that make it difficult or impossible for landowners to repurpose their land for decades.

  • Loss of decision-making power. Wind and solar contracts restrict if, where and how you can build buildings, put roads, and plant trees on your own property.

Concealing corporate backing and motives

  • Masking foreign ownership: They may hide that the company is owned by foreign or out-of-state entities with little investment in local communities. Lafayette Wind is owned by a Polish energy conglomerate.

  • Disguising industrial scale: They describe projects as small or "community-based," masking the reality of large-scale industrial complexes.

Overstating renewable energy benefits & reliability

  • False sustainability claims: Industrial wind and solar companies may suggest the energy produced will directly benefit the local community when, in reality, it often goes to distant cities or industrial users.

  • Greenwashing: They frame projects as environmentally essential while ignoring the carbon footprint of manufacturing, installing, and maintaining the equipment.

  • Over-promising power stability: They imply that wind and solar farms alone can replace traditional energy sources, downplaying issues like intermittency and reliance on backup power.