Cases

Three engagements, anonymized.

All identifying detail removed; the situations described are real. Named cases shared only with the parties to the transaction, under NDA. Download our quarterly Field Risk Report (PDF) for additional anonymized cases, voivodeship matrix, and market analysis.

01
Wind · Corporate Landowner · 18 MW

Fourteen months, one corporate landowner, one lease.

Situation

An 18 MW onshore wind project required a single critical lease from a corporate agricultural landowner. The counterparty was simultaneously engaged with at least one competing developer and was running the negotiation as a multi-variable commercial process: lease price, cooperation terms, bank guarantees, indexation mechanism, and competitive comparison among bidders. Earlier developer engagement had stalled in this rhythm; no developer had closed.

Field finding

The risk on this parcel was not refusal. The risk was being out-cadenced by a competitor able to turn around legal redlines faster, or being out-positioned in management's relative comparison of bidders. The contest was for execution credibility and continuity of presence — not for price level. None of this was visible in the data room.

Action

Three parallel commitments sustained over fourteen months. (1) Same-day or next-day legal-response cycles to redlines from the counterparty's in-house legal department — a discipline competing developers proved unable to maintain across a multi-quarter negotiation. (2) In-person presentation of each substantive revision directly to the counterparty's management, on their cadence and in their offices. (3) Sustained relationship-building with the CEO outside the transactional conversation. No artificial price escalation was used as the lever.

Outcome

Lease signed at month 14, on terms aligned with the project's original economic model. Competing developers exited the process. Parcel secured; project advanced to subsequent development stages.

Implication for a buyer

Corporate-landowner cases are often classified by internal land teams as "stuck" when in reality they are running on a competitive execution rhythm the team cannot sustain. Funds acquiring partially-developed projects should differentiate between parcels genuinely blocked on commercial terms and parcels where the seller team was simply out-cadenced. The latter are routinely the most rapidly recoverable assets in a portfolio — but only with a field-level capability the seller did not have.

02
Wind · Hostile Commune · 45 MW

Reversing an anti-wind commune.

Situation

A 45 MW onshore wind project required MPZP zoning support from a commune in which opposition was actively organized. The most visible local figure was a sołtys personally going door-to-door with petitions against the project. Beneath that, the commune carried a ten-year-old historical wound: a previous developer had signed lease agreements with a number of local owners and then disappeared without performance, leaving owners locked in unusable arrangements. Compounding both was a general baseline of low community understanding of how modern wind projects actually work.

Field finding

The opposition was not unified — it was a composite of three distinct mechanisms operating in parallel: (a) one motivated individual actively organizing local opinion, (b) an unresolved generational grievance against the wind industry as a category, and (c) genuine information asymmetry about the technology and the lease structure. Standard developer responses (technical presentations, formal community meetings, lease offers at higher prices) addressed only the third mechanism, leaving the first two untouched and dominant.

Action

A nine-month engagement structured around all three mechanisms in sequence. (1) Direct engagement with the sołtys, identifying what would constitute resolution and what would not, and separating his concerns from those he was amplifying second-hand. (2) Open conversation with the owners affected by the previous failed developer's leases, structurally separating that developer's behaviour from the current project, and where reasonable, providing pathways out of the legacy arrangements. (3) Ongoing community-level education on the basic physics, lease economics, and post-construction operating reality of modern wind, conducted as a sustained local presence rather than a single information event.

Outcome

MPZP modified to permit wind development in the project area at month nine. Project advanced through subsequent stages. The structurally dominant opposition mechanism de-escalated; the residual community position normalized.

Implication for a buyer

"Hostile commune" is nearly always a composite, not a single thing. The composite breakdown — who is the active driver, what is the legacy wound from prior industry behaviour, and what is the genuine information gap — is invisible in any data room and rarely surfaced even in seller-side stakeholder reports. Funds underwriting wind acquisitions in apparently-hostile communes should require a composite-level diagnosis before either pricing the project hard or excluding it.

03
Wind · Multi-Owner Inheritance · 60 MW

Twelve co-owners, one parcel, one WTG, one project at 70 percent.

Situation

A 60 MW onshore wind project was 70 percent secured at the time of engagement. Closing the remaining 30 percent of the project's footprint depended, among other items, on one parcel needed to retain a single wind turbine generator (WTG) location. That parcel was held by twelve co-owners under a complex inheritance and life-situation structure. Two co-owners had died without completed succession proceedings. One was serving a prison sentence. One of the living co-owners was permanently immobile and had no eligible proxy to appoint. The parcel had been flagged by the project's prior team as "high risk, likely unsecurable."

Field finding

Securing the parcel required four structurally independent procedural and relational tracks operating in parallel against the project's WTG-securing window. None of the twelve co-owners were unwilling in principle; each track simply required a different legal, logistical, or relational mechanism. The parcel was not unsecurable in legal terms — it was unsecurable within the prior team's operating envelope.

Action

Six months of parallel work across four independent tracks. (1) Inheritance proceedings (postępowanie spadkowe) for the two deceased co-owners, in coordination with the local court and identified heirs — the hardest of the four tracks and the binding constraint on overall timeline. (2) Lawful signature procedure for the incarcerated co-owner. (3) On-site notarization at the residence of the immobile co-owner, scheduled around her availability, because no eligible proxy could be appointed. (4) Individual engagement with the remaining living co-owners, each on their own motivation and family context. End-to-end timeline coordination so all twelve threads converged into a single lease structure within the project's WTG window.

Outcome

All twelve required signatures, or their proper legal equivalents through completed inheritance, the incarcerated-co-owner procedure, and on-site notarization, were obtained within six months. Parcel secured. WTG retained in the project. Closing of the remaining 30 percent of the project's footprint enabled.

Implication for a buyer

"High-risk, likely unsecurable" is internal-team language for "we do not have the operating capacity to run this case." It is not the same statement as "this parcel cannot be secured." Funds acquiring partially-developed projects with one or two such parcels written off by the seller team should treat these parcels as recoverable optionality, not as permanently lost value — but only with a field-level team capable of running parallel non-standard tracks against a transaction timeline.

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