Our Community Model

National Renewable Solutions utilizes the Community Model for all of its projects. With this model, the local landowners and community members can take an active ownership role in the actual project company.The advantage of this model is the landowner commitment and the prospective intrinsic value of supporting the rural economic development investment from its current owners. A key piece of this valuation is tied to a strong, consistent, local ownership model. NRS has worked with each of its project entities and their local owners to strengthen this model to assure significant “across the board” local economic value to be generated by the projects.

The key features of this model are:

• Project Size Matters. All of the project entities are “utility scale” (at least 50MW’s) and are designed to capitalize on the scale and cost efficiencies of larger projects, so as to compete broadly within their development region. The project financing options generally applied to multi-national and foreign corporations are readily available to these locally owned projects, thereby generating much more substantial economic benefits in the region.
• Start-up Local Land and Capital Investment.  At start-up, all the local capital and land investments are invested to assure a comprehensive development strategy. The combined efforts of NRS and the local landowners and investors “de-risk” the development process. All of these projects have sufficient land secured, met towers in place, interconnection options filed and/or pending, and key environmental issues identified and addressed. Over $8 million has already been invested in the projects, so that their development viability can be accurately assessed.
• Establishment of Local Advisory Boards. For each of these projects, the local members have established an “Advisory Board” that meets with the manager, at least on a quarterly basis. These advisory boards review project details and progress, and provide counsel to the developer on key issues associated with project leasing, development standards and local political issues. These advisory boards have increasingly important roles in supporting permitting processes, helping to ease construction issues and ultimately guiding the contribution process once funding becomes available.
• Landowner and Investors - “Development period payments – converted to equity”. In addition to the start-up capital required to initiate these projects, the landowners have agreed and committed to convert 80 to 90% of their “development holding payments” into equity, generally for a period of five years. This represents a continuing investment in the projects (collectively), which substantially reduces on-going operating cost for the projects.
• Dedicate an ownership percentage in each project entity to a local foundation. To be classified as a true “community project” there needs to be a feature of the project that benefits more than just the investors and landowners. To meet this objective, NRS has encouraged the creation of local foundations with a stated purpose of providing grants for local schools and other worthwhile area wide programs. The foundations will be funded by a dedication of 2% to 3% of the equity interests in each project entity.