First question: Is this really just an access agreement?
While an access agreement sounds temporary, developers frequently combine it with an Option Deed or Option to Lease. If you sign an agreement that contains an option, you are forfeiting the right to say "No" to a 30-year commercial lease later on. This is a red flag.
Why does a developer need access agreements?
This is a normal process in the pathway to securing land for the project, but the agreements may also provide an important value adding component to the package, to sell to another developer. The current developer of Winterbourne Wind, for example, is building book value to the project in order to sell it, possibly at the landholders expense.
In the case of Winterbourne Wind, as an example, there is a history of timeline blowouts.
Today, just like 5 years ago, Winterbourne Wind are once again forecasting a 2 year period until construction – forecast now for 2028.
This is a clear pattern of over-promising and under-delivering.
Every year that this project is pushed back, is a year of devaluation and deferment of income to landholders. It is another year of forfeiting the right to exclude or control visitors on the property, and another year of disruption from monitoring equipment, or other investigation activity. It is another year in limbo, and another year carrying the liability of forfeiting certain property rights.
Are the current Winterbourne Wind timeline goals valid, are they realistic? Is this developer capable of delivering to expectation, of meeting goals? Is there a history of expectations being met. Not by the test of history. These are important considerations for a landholder signing an access agreement.
If you extend your agreement again, what happens if construction slips another five years? What are you paid while your land remains tied up, and when can you walk away? Can you sell your property, or effectively borrow against it for another purchase?
While sometimes contested by renewable developers when advising landholders, the facts must be sought. In the case of a holding entity of the project going into receivership, or lacking the ability to finance the decommissioning process, the ultimate responsibility of decommissioning falls to the landholder. This has been referred to a number of times.
In 2026, NSW Premier Chris Minns was unequivocal;
Dr. Anne Webster MP warned;
Under oath, Matt Riley, of NSW Planning, gave evidence at the Upper House Inquiry Hearing into the “Impact of Renewable Energy Zones on Rural and Regional Communities and Industries in NSW”. During a line of questioning about the responsibility of decommissioning, a very revealing response – under oath – was given.
He then says that means there is “always some sort of risk or obligation on whomever owns the land”, usually not the renewable developer, and explains why the Government did not want a bond to give landholders a false sense of security:
This is no surprise, it is explicitly stated in the NSW Wind Energy Guideline. If the operator became insolvent, would the landholder end up bearing the decommissioning responsibility? The answer is in the NSW Wind Energy Guideline:
There is typically a legal requirement for a developer to clean up, but if a holding company goes bust, the landholder pays. The law, and the contract, can’t extract money out of an offshore special purpose shelf company that decides to go bust.
These projects are resold, and resold, a number of times. Structuring a company to devoid itself of assets at the end of a project life is a pretty simple task – if it so desired. The risk is real, and with decommissioning costs likely to be close to $1m per turbine in today’s money, this would exceed all income earnt over the previous 20 years.
In NSW, agricultural land can be exempt from land tax where primary production is the dominant use of the land. Hosting a wind farm does not automatically remove that exemption, but Revenue NSW specifically identifies wind farming as a competing non-primary-production use that can cause the exemption to be lost. The test is not simply whether farm income exceeds wind-lease income; Revenue NSW considers factors including the area used, scale and intensity of each activity, capital investment, revenue and profit, labour and resources, and the duration of each use.
The important point is that there is not a simple rule that agricultural income must exceed wind-farm income. The legal test under s 10AA of the Land Tax Management Act 1956 is whether primary production remains the “dominant use” of the land.
Revenue NSW specifically singles out wind farms
Revenue NSW's current ruling LT 097v3 – Land used for primary production says that where land has both agricultural and non-agricultural uses, it looks at:
A significant risk is that Revenue NSW assesses the exemption parcel by parcel, and there is generally no partial exemption within a parcel. If wind generation becomes the dominant use of a title, the whole parcel may become taxable, even if cattle continue grazing across most of it and turbines occupy only a relatively small footprint. Because wind projects involve very large capital investment and can generate substantial lease income, the economic weight of the wind development may outweigh the physical area occupied when determining dominant use.
If the exemption is lost, the land value of that parcel is added to the owner's other taxable NSW land for land-tax purposes, potentially creating a substantial annual liability. Wind-host agreements should therefore be reviewed carefully to ensure the developer indemnifies the landholder for all additional land tax arising from the project, including loss of the primary-production exemption, aggregation effects, retrospective assessments, interest, penalties and professional costs. Revenue NSW's own guidance makes clear that this is a genuine issue for wind-farm hosts, not merely a theoretical risk.
Consider your land value, and the potential land tax liability. If you lose your Land Tax exemption, and 6 turbines, generating $230,000 of income, are on a parcel of land with a three-year average Valuer General land value of $15 million, the annual land tax payable is over $250,000.
Then consider if you have a couple of investment properties that currently sit beneath the land value tax threshold of $1.075M. These properties would then also be included in the aggregate and have land tax liability.
It’s worth getting some advice.
There is growing community, and land holder awareness of the wider impacts of a project such as Winterbourne Wind on the community and the LGA assets. This includes the impact to landholders who would incur compulsory acquisition of their land for transmission easements for infrastructure to serve the generation projects.
Typically, operations on an agricultural property do not impact neighbours, or the wider community. However, when roads are heavily impacted for periods of up to 5 years, when accommodation and housing are impacted by worker requirements, and when neighbours are impacted by construction, amenity, and other impacts, there is considerable disruption to community harmony.
There is a growing awareness also, that an offshore developer, who has no interest in owning the project, also has no interest in giving to the community any more that is required to win the minimal social licence required. The clear play is “give as little as possible while we take as much as possible.”
In the case of Winterbourne, as a case study, there is a lot of uncertainty around the future owner of the project. Vestas have no interest in owning a wind project, only selling turbines, constructing it and maintaining it. This has been clearly communicated publicly, and through direct communication with Voice for Walcha. However, it may not be the message that landholders are getting.
This means that host landholders, and community members, do not know who we will have in our region, owning one of the most significant landscape changing and community changing developments in the town’s history. Who will be accountable for traffic incidents on our roads, biodiversity damage on the project site, social impacts such as hikes in rent, or damage to council owned assets such as Thunderbolts Way?
Will this be a responsible developer, or one that works with the cheapest bidder?
So far, we know that Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, who Vestas described as the capital partner in the project, have exited the project in 2025. They have reversed the transaction, and left the project in the hands of Vestas, who have no interest in progressing the project under their own steam. Vestas are not in the business of owning wind projects. They will sell the turbines, carry out the installation, and would like to hold the maintenance contract – but they need a buyer for the project to progress.
Many renewable projects end up with planning approval but cannot progress without a capital partner. Ghost projects.
Questions that are valid, to ask Winterbourne Wind;
Currently, our concern is that they are “cheapening” the project at every opportunity, to make the project as easy as possible to sell to an investor. This is not a good formula for our community, or for landholders. They are removing obligations from the future project owner at every opportunity. Everyone who deals with Winterbourne Wind need to be aware of this reality.
Given the massive potential liability of interruption to generation through fire, or other accident, the obligation of land hosts, and their non-benefiting neighbours, is significant.
The wind project hosting agreement may agree to absorb additional insurance premium costs incurred from an increased risk profile, as a result of hosting wind generation towers, but not all will.
Other issues that can arise;
There has been much written about the liability to livestock operations through LPA awareness of residues relating to wind turbine blade erosion. Studies have identified that there is around 62kg of residue lost from leading edge erosion per turbine, per year, in a study carried out in Norway, in 2021.
The source is: Solberg, A., Rimereit, B-E. & Weinbach, J.E. (2021), Leading Edge Erosion and Pollution from Wind Turbine Blades.
Add to that the impact of ice on cold new England mornings, and that leads to a lot of toxic material, such as the BPA plastics used in blade manufacture, landing on the ground and ending up in waterways on farm. The LPA have recognised this and have included a declaration question in the LPA audit process.
BPA plastics are a known component in fibreglass epoxy construction. While much of the BPA is utilised and reacted to form the cross-linked epoxy polymer, not all is. Importantly, researchers working with actual retired wind-turbine blades have demonstrated that BPA can be recovered when the epoxy polymer is chemically broken down; a 2026 study specifically describes retired blade material as containing “BPA-type epoxy resin.”
BPA, (bisphenol A) is an endocrine disruptor that has significant effects in small quantities. It impacts nervous systems, reproduction and has other systemic health impacts. It is very toxic in small quantities. EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) substantially reduced its tolerable daily intake in 2023 to 0.2 nanograms/kg bodyweight/day, largely on evidence concerning immune-system effects.
A valid question to ask a wind developer;
What resin and leading-edge coating systems does Vestas propose for the particular turbine model, whether those materials use BPA/DGEBA chemistry, what their Safety Data Sheets show, what quantities of blade material Vestas predicts will be lost through leading-edge erosion over the project's life, and whether the BDAR/EIS has assessed the environmental fate of those particles.
Before you sign anything, ask these questions >
Disclaimer: This document is published for discussion and informational purposes to assist landholders in evaluating proposed wind energy developments. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the statements and references contained herein at the time of publication, regulations, market conditions, and project details may change. This material does not constitute formal legal, financial, or tax advice. Landholders are strongly advised to obtain independent, tailored advice from qualified legal, accounting, and insurance professionals before signing any agreements.
