Scots want lower bills, quality jobs and a good standard of living. The renewable energy revolution can bring all that, but we need to learn lessons from the North Sea oil and gas boom and bring control of the country’s vast natural resources into the hands of the people to reap the full rewards
By Liz Murray, policy manager for Community Energy Scotland
Since locals on the Isle of Gigha installed four wind turbines some years ago, the benefits across the whole island have been huge. The hundreds of thousands of pounds earned from selling their locally generated electricity to the grid has come directly back into the community, which has used the cash to help fund housing developments and restorations, business unit development, moorings and tourism accommodation. As the development manager of the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust said: “The turbine income has been absolutely essential to the success of Gigha. We have grown our population from 90 to 170; we have been able to build decent housing that has retained and recruited young families to live here; we are now able to protect and restore the famous Achamore Gardens; and our new camping and motorhome facilities ensure we provide a much better visitor experience whilst reducing car-borne traffic and protecting our beautiful island.”
There are other stories like this in Scotland, where local communities own and control their own renewable energy developments. Different things are done with the money in different places – that’s what being in control is about – but the common factor is that the income generated from community-owned renewables stays in the locality, is invested in things that benefit people across the area, and in many cases is used to bring in further income. Research has shown that community-owned wind provides 34 times more financial benefit to local people than privately owned windfarms. And community energy projects also generate tenfold additional local employment and income impact, over and above the energy project itself.
There’s so much potential, but there aren’t nearly enough stories like that of Gigha.
Scotland’s rural and island communities, which have some of the hardest to heat homes and the least access to the gas network, are paying some of the highest energy bills in the UK – with people in northern Scotland paying more than those in any other region for standing charges and the unit price of electricity. Yet these places also have some of the best renewable energy resources – particularly wind.
Inhabitants in these places are seeing large-scale renewable energy infrastructure operating or being built on their doorsteps, but they aren’t feeling any positive benefits from these big developments. While public support for renewables remains very high, it’s no wonder that some Scots are starting to push back against large-scale, corporate-owned wind farms.
For Scotland to have more stories like Gigha, we urgently need the obstacles to community-owned energy to be removed. Only this way can the benefits of Scotland’s renewable energy revolution be more fairly shared. The Just Transition – the fair move away from climate-polluting fossil fuels to a greener future for all – needs to be made a reality not just a catchphrase. And ownership is fundamental to how ‘just’ the Just Transition to renewable energy is.
So what could be done to ramp up community ownership of renewable energy? There are actions that both the Scottish and UK governments must do. Community groups wanting to set up renewables locally need more support, including legal, commercial and planning advice as well as money to pay for the enormous amount of time that many locals currently give voluntarily to make their plans a reality. Once they have a project plan they, crucially, need to know they’re going to get access to the grid. Recent moves by the National Energy System Operator have set this back in Scotland and we urgently need the UK government to fix this or community energy projects here risk coming to a standstill between now and 2035 just for this reason alone.
Complete community ownership may not be practical for all communities and, in that case, there are other alternatives to help share the profits being generated by larger scale, privately owned renewables projects. Developers should be required to offer at least 20% shared ownership to communities on all commercial projects. For those communities in the vicinity of a commercial windfarm but not wanting to take up shared ownership, a community benefit fund is the next best thing – and this should be made mandatory. Currently it’s optional.
A Scottish Community Wealth Fund – in addition to local community benefit funds and made up of compulsory contributions from all energy developers – would complement this and fundamentally shift the dial on fairness. Funds from this would be available to all communities across Scotland, to use to make people’s lives better, since we’re all paying for the transition one way or another.
A Scottish Community Wealth Fund would be a pioneering national approach to building equity, fairness and certainty into the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. A fund like this would help ensure the past mistake of letting Scotland’s oil wealth go into corporate hands would not be repeated.
Community Energy Scotland is pushing at both Scottish and UK level for all these changes because, through our members, we can clearly see the huge benefits that come from community ownership of energy: from insulating people’s houses and keeping local facilities like cafes and pubs running, to providing public transport where it otherwise would not exist.
With the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Plan currently being finalised and the Holyrood elections coming up in May, there’s a huge opportunity right now for all parties in Scotland to firmly get behind these ideas and to make sure the Just Transition really is fair and that it is done ‘with’ the people of Scotland and not ‘to’ them.
This opinion piece was originally published in The National here
