Sebastian Knauer, Who Owns the Wind?, Der Spiegel online (May 4, 2007):
It's an offense not mentioned in the bible or the statute books. But in a broader sense it is about theft, even when the booty itself is invisible. But it is still a major problem for the German legal system, including a court in Leipzig that is currently hearing a case involving a dispute between the operators of two wind turbine facilities. Who owns the wind?The parties in the dispute are the owner of a wind farm in Deliztsch in the eastern German state of Saxony and a businessman, who wants to set up a bigger wind farm in the immediate vicinity.
1 comment:
I suppose a different set of legal problems would be posed by using ocean waves to power turbines.... The turbines will reduce the strength of the waves as the turbines are turned by the action of the waves. (Some of the best experimental turbines use buoys that bob up and down thus putting a piston in motion and generating electricity. The buoys look like navigational buoys.) The reduction in wave energy could have an affect on the shore (or other turbines) in the immediate area. Usually the effect will be negligible but one can imagine some shore lines - tidal pools for example - that depend on the action of the waves to maintain an ecological system.
One wonders though, what do the usual laws of sea have to say about such things? And since these are turbines that would be located some distance off the coast line, how does one draw the legal connection from the sea based turbines to the effects on the shoreline, which are usually governed by different legal regimes?
Jerry
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