The largest owner and operator of renewable energy facilities in the world announced yesterday that it is purchasing Community Energy Inc., a Pennsylvania-based company that wants to build a wind farm in Lempster.

Iberdrola, headquartered in Madrid, Spain, says the merger will combine its international experience in wind energy with CEI’s market leadership. It also will not affect the wind farm proposed for Lempster, according to Jeff Keeler, New England director for CEI.

The merger will bring long-term investment to the project and to Lempster with a worldwide wind energy leader, Keeler said. CEI will remain a separate company based in the United States. The company’s management team and the Lempster project team will also stay the same, he said.

CEI wants to build a dozen 200-foot turbines on about 25 acres of Lempster Mountain. If the company succeeds, the project would be the first major source of wind power in New Hampshire — and one of the first new wind power sources in New England in more than decade.

Last month, residents and town officials requested a state review of the project, potentially delaying construction by up to a year or stopping it altogether.

CEI says its turbines could provide electricity to about 10,000 New Hampshire homes annually.

But Lempster residents are concerned about how the windmills would look dotting the ridge.

The state Site Evaluation Committee, which examines energy projects, has never reviewed a renewable energy project before. Typically, it oversees larger-scale power facilities, such as the Seabrook nuclear power plant. This is also the first time the petition process has been used to trigger such a review.

The $30 million wind farm project calls for power lines to run from the site along Route 10 through Goshen to Newport. The turbines would have a total footprint of about 12 acres. The towers would be spaced about 1,000 feet apart and would sit about 20 miles north of Keene and fewer than five miles south of Mount Sunapee.

Iberdrola recently announced plans to build more than 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy worldwide by the end of 2011. Keeler said CEI is expected to be a key part of the strategy in America, and will remain a separate company with its executive and senior management team intact.

The acquisition is pending approval from authorities.

Iberdrola has increased its net profit in the first quarter of this year by 16.3 percent, to $403 million.

Community Energy, of Wayne, Penn., markets and develops wind energy and was founded in 1999. It supplies more than 75,000 residential and business customers and 18 investor-owned and municipal utilities. It also has about 2000 megawatts of wind projects under development in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.