Historical Property Tax Revenue: Wind and Solar Projects in Illinois

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Wind and solar energy projects increase the property tax base of a county, creating a new revenue source for education and other local government services, such as fire protection, park districts, and road maintenance.  Strategic Economic Research, LLC has calculated the amount of property tax revenue generated by wind and solar projects.

To collect the historical property taxes that existing utility-scale wind and solar energy projects have paid, we contacted each County Assessor’s Office to retrieve a list of parcel identification numbers associated with wind or solar farms within their county. Once we got that information, we were able to look up the tax information through each county’s property tax database. The information that was collected included the names of the taxing bodies paid to by that particular PIN, the tax rates for all of those taxing bodies, as well as the exact amount of taxes paid to each taxing entity. This data was collected for every year that the wind/solar farm was online and for every PIN associated with a wind or solar farm and totaled 223,852 tax records.