Val-Éo cooperative solidarity was founded in November 2005 to allow farmers and their communities to maintain control over the management of their wind resources. The establishment of Val-Éo was triggered by a strategic reflection carried out in the winter of 2005 by representatives of the basic UPA unions of Labarre and Belle-Rivière, supported by the UPA Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, the Regional Municipality of Lac-Saint-Jean-Est County and the Local Development Center. This reflection led to the conclusion that the approach used for wind power development in Quebec (based on the hand of large corporations that control the projects) was not desirable for our community, but that farmers nevertheless had the power to take management of the wind resource by pooling their “wind rights” (i.e. option contracts) within an organization of their own, rather than granting these rights to a private developer. From there was born the main idea of Val-Éo: to consolidate wind rights to manage them collectively and to invest in the study of our resource to better understand it, value it adequately and manage it with respect for our quality of life. By the spring of 2006, Val-Éo already had some fifty member farms and had installed three wind measurement masts.
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