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TL Tracey Lefroy On Agtech - So What?

“This turbine, for example, can generate seven megawatts of power. However, sometimes it may even be turned off, such that it's only generating two megawatts. That's irrelevant to the landowner. The land only gets paid on its potential, on nameplate capacity.”

Agtech - So What? · Alternative Proteins · November 2026

“This turbine, for example, can generate seven megawatts of power. However, sometimes it may even be turned off, such that it's only generating two megawatts. That's irrelevant to the landowner. The land only gets paid on its potential, on nameplate capacity.” — Tracey Lefroy, Agtech - So What?

Context

Walking through how host payments for wind turbines work, in dollars per megawatt per year, she explains nameplate capacity. The point is that landowners carry the footprint whether or not the company runs the asset.

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Transcript

Agtech - So What? Around 24:36 into the episode
Tracey Lefroy

…that's the bit when you actually go, oh, this isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. So you're normally looking at about 2% to 3% footprint of the total farm area and you are getting paid dollars per megawatt again. And that's always on nameplate capacity, not on generation of electricity.

Sarah Nolet

For anyone not familiar. So nameplate

Tracey Lefroy

capacity is basically this turbine, for example, can generate seven megawatts of power. However, sometimes it may even be turned off such that it's only generating two megawatts of power. That's irrelevant to the landowner. Land only gets paid on what its potential. Interesting. You know, nameplate capacity is.

Sarah Nolet

Presumably because the landowner isn't making that decision to turn it on or off, it's the company and you've still incurred the cost of having the project there.

Tracey Lefroy

Other things that get written into your contract, which are super important, are things like rate differentials. So if your farming land changes, and some local governments are choosing this, your farming land may get rated differently if you are a host of renewable energy. And it's really…

Sarah Nolet

Yeah, it makes sense. That kind of community impact is one that I'm really interested in as well. That there's, you know, I've heard things like a big challenge has been when projects are going up in regional areas that the labor force actually do the installation. Like, is that taking away from…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Agtech - So What?

“What struck me first was the asymmetry in the approach. There were three people who came at first. This was a team who had done this dozens of times. They'd approached multiple families over multiple years, over multiple projects. We'd never done this. That gap in knowledge and experience and even in project literacy was real and huge, and you start feeling a little bit like you're on the back foot.” — Tracey Lefroy, Agtech - So What? “I'm not pro-development, I'm not anti-development, but if development is coming, how do we leverage it to the best of our ability to have that legacy impact? If you can find the pieces of the puzzle that are common to everyone, you're going to have more constructive conversations than trying to say to someone you have to host renewable energy transmission lines because it's good for the environment. That's quite a hard sell.” — Tracey Lefroy, Agtech - So What?