Wind & Solar Leasing in Knox County, MO (2026 Guide)

Knox County's defining land-use story of the 2020s is a single large wind project -- now called the NEMO Wind Project -- that has gone from a Tenaska proposal, to a Cordelio Power acquisition, to a negotiated county development agreement, to a construction timeline that has slipped twice. Here's what a Knox County landowner evaluating a lease, or buying near one, should know.

This page covers what's specific to Knox County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

From Tenaska to Cordelio: how the project got here

Tenaska, an Omaha-based energy developer, began proposing a wind project for Knox County around 2020, at one point discussing a 200-300 MW facility with 70-150 turbines and holding community meetings (including drive-through dinners for participating landowners) to explain the plan. In May 2021, Tenaska sold the project to Cordelio Power, a Canadian renewable-energy developer, with Tenaska continuing on as lead developer during the transition. The project has since scaled to a narrower, more concrete plan: roughly 31,500 leased acres and a final turbine count in the 60-80 range, generally referred to now as the NEMO Wind Project.

For a landowner in Knox County, the practical takeaway is that this project has a real, multi-year paper trail -- a specific developer, a specific acreage under lease, and a specific set of terms negotiated with the county -- rather than being a speculative proposal that might never materialize. That also means a parcel's proximity to the leased footprint is a genuine, current due-diligence question, not a hypothetical one.

The county's negotiated development agreement and setbacks

Because Knox County has no zoning ordinance, there was no existing wind-energy conditional-use process for the county to fall back on -- instead, the Knox County Commission negotiated a standalone development agreement directly with the developer. That process took time and had at least one public setback: commissioners initially voted down a version of the agreement on October 17, 2022, before approving a revised version 2-0 on October 24, 2022, after Eastern District Commissioner Ronnie Leckbee described the final setback terms as the closest a turbine could be to a residence being 1,400 feet with a signed waiver, or 1,750 feet without one -- reported at the time as a larger buffer than other Missouri wind projects had negotiated.

That negotiated-agreement structure is worth understanding if you're a landowner near the project footprint but not a participant in the lease yourself: your protections come from the terms the county negotiated on behalf of the public generally, not from a zoning board you could petition directly. If a specific parcel is close enough to the project that setback distance matters to you, get the current development agreement and its exhibits directly from the Knox County Commission rather than relying on a news summary of the 2022 vote.

What a lease is reported to be worth, and to whom

Cordelio's public estimates put the project at roughly 350 temporary construction jobs and 39 permanent operating jobs once built, with the Knox County R-1 School District projected to receive approximately $1.2 million per year in property tax revenue once the turbines are generating power and back on the tax rolls -- a substantial figure for a small rural school district's budget. Specific per-acre or per-turbine lease payment terms for individual Knox County landowners were not confirmed in public reporting during this research pass; if you're evaluating or negotiating a lease, that detail needs to come from the developer's actual lease document and, ideally, a landowner attorney experienced in wind leases, not from published county-level estimates.

Road use is a related and often-overlooked piece of the economics here: Cordelio has executed road-use agreements with the Knox County Commission and was, as of the most recent reporting, still finalizing one with the Missouri Department of Transportation, plus a separate agreement covering eastern Adair County roads that the project needs for construction access. Under those agreements, the developer is responsible for upgrading roads to handle construction truck traffic beforehand and restoring them afterward -- worth knowing if your own access road intersects the construction route, since road condition and dust/traffic disruption during a multi-year build can matter as much as the turbines themselves.

A construction timeline that keeps slipping -- and what that means for you

The project has been rescheduled more than once. Cordelio initially hoped to break ground in 2024; by December 2024, the timeline had moved to construction beginning in early summer 2025, with public road improvements and turbine-foundation work starting first, construction continuing as late into 2025 as weather allowed, a winter suspension, and work resuming in spring 2026 for a targeted end-of-2026 completion. By June 2025, Cordelio had pushed the whole schedule back another year, rescheduling the construction start itself to early summer 2026. As of the most recent reporting available for this review, discussions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an Incidental Take Permit for threatened and endangered species in the project footprint were still ongoing, and the final turbine layout was described as nearly, but not yet fully, finalized.

For a land buyer, the practical implication is to treat any specific completion date reported in the press as provisional. If a parcel's value or use to you depends on whether nearby turbines are operating, under construction, or still years out, verify the current status directly with the Knox County Commission or Cordelio Power rather than relying on a news article that may already be a year or two out of date by the time you read this.

Wind and Solar Leasing in Knox County, Missouri

From Tenaska to Cordelio: how the project got here

The county's negotiated development agreement and setbacks

What a lease is reported to be worth, and to whom

A construction timeline that keeps slipping -- and what that means for you

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