Community energy: With a fair wind

In 2009, the North Uist community began a decade-long journey to produce its own renewable energy after it identified it could be a key component for the long-term sustainability of the chain of islands.  

Its energy scheme centred around community ownership of a portion of the renewable energy infrastructure in the area. It secured two 900kW turbines at the Criongrabhal wind farm. 

Almost 250 islanders invested directly, most buying shares in the scheme. The round of investment was so successful that it raised £450,000 to get the project off the ground – £100,000 more than its target. The Scottish Government also funded it through an Energy Investment Fund loan, while a loan from Triodos was also secured. 

Ameena Camps, one of the commissioners on Scotland’s Just Transition Commission and the former project delivery manager for UistWind, says the project was part of the “first burst” of community energy projects in Scotland. Still, unlike many that were started around the same time, it experienced “extra difficulties”.   

In 2013, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar approved the planning application, but the Ministry of Defence objected on the grounds that the turbines would interfere with air defence radar systems at South Clettraval. 

Following a local public inquiry into the planning, Scottish ministers agreed with the conclusions of the inquiry with respect to the radar issues and refused planning permission. 

Four years on from the beginning of the planning dispute, approval was granted in June 2017 subject to several planning conditions, and an eventual agreement with the Ministry of Defence on a radar mitigation scheme was reached in 2018.  

It took nine years for the full generation of the wind turbines to commence. Despite the years of difficulty, the project is now operational and the community is generating energy that it sells back to the grid. Early projections suggested that the turbines would generate up to £2.3m over its expected 25-year lifespan, resulting in an annual income for the community of almost 1,300 islanders of around £105,000. 

In 2020, the project met its target of 6,129,000 kWh in just under one year of operational electricity generation – enough to power all the homes in North Uist, and it has already paid off the Energy Investment Fund loan. 

It’s one of the many success stories from the early years of community energy projects in Scotland, and it now serves as a great example of what communities can do to reap economic benefits from the energy transition – a sector where large energy companies have historically heavily profited. 

The community benefit has been quantified by a 2021 report, produced by Aquatera, an environmental consultancy, on behalf of Point and Sandwick Development Trust. It found that Scotland’s community-owned wind farms have provided, on average, 34 times more benefit payments to local communities than privately-owned wind farms.  

It compared nine community-owned and four private wind farms in Scotland and found that returns from the community-owned wind farms average £170,000 per installed MW per annum, far exceeding the community benefit payment industry standard of £5,000 per installed MW per annum. 

As of December 2023, there were 27,900 community and locally owned renewable energy installations, including solar, wind, and hydroelectric with a capacity of 1,028 MW. It’s an encouraging sign as it represents 51 per cent of the Scottish Government’s target of having 2GW of community and locally owned energy by the end of 2030. 

However, community energy, according to Local Energy Scotland’s map of community and local energy projects, only represents a tenth of the electricty being produced. To add to that, the 2030 target has changed significantly in the last decade. In December 2017, as part of the Scottish Energy Strategy, ministers changed the wording of the target to include locally owned and privately owned energy projects in addition to those owned specifically by communities, whilst bring the target date from 2020 to 2030. 

These projects are different from community energy endeavours. Locally owned energy projects are owned by individuals, local authorities, and other private sector organisations within the area, not owned by a community group. 

The key difference between them is that locally owned does not necessarily see benefits shared with the wider community and it does not have the same democratic control that community projects have. 

It was argued the change was made to reflect the increasing role of small-scale, local enterprises in the energy landscape alongside community energy projects, and in turn, made its original target more achievable whilst also encouraging a wider range of ownership models. 

But Mark Hull, chief technical officer of Community Energy Scotland, says by making the target about locally owned projects as well as community owned, “we have lost a bit of the recognition of the struggle of community energy projects”. 

“The struggle to progress community energy was in some way papered over by lumping those two targets together. The private developments have sort of filled a hole in the statistical figures. 

“We want to see at least 1GW of community-owned energy by 2030.” 

And the struggle to progress community energy appears to have increased since the North Uist project. Camps explains the “landscape has changed” in the last five years and says how difficult it is to replicate what UistWind has developed. She points to a lack of subsidy as well as a lack of capacity on the grid, which is crucial if a community wants to sell the energy it produces. 

The UK Government’s Feed-in Tariff scheme, which ended in 2019, allowed consumers to receive payments from their energy suppliers when they generated their power with wind or solar. 

According to Scottish Renewables, the Feed-in Tariff scheme allowed for more than 700MW of small power schemes to be installed by homes, businesses and communities since 2010. It argued when it ended in 2019 that it would create “a period of enormous uncertainty” for the companies that install these projects and for the people who work for them. 

Camps tells Holyrood: “It was a lot easier when our project was developing than it is now because there were subsidies in place. We have one of the last Feed-in Tariffs for a project the size of ours – a 1.8MW wind farm, which is quite small. 

“We also have one of the last spaces on the grid. Since then, there has been no space on the grid for any further projects. Those two elements de-risked our project and there was a much easier system in place at the time, as well as the Scottish Government having a large loan to help projects which were able to match private lenders.” 

Hull says Feed-in Tariffs gave “a boom” to the sector from which community projects benefited, but now says there few rewards for community energy projects. 

“There is a real lack of social reward and dividend for community energy when it comes to policy. And with that, it has started to slow down and stall projects and has ultimately made it harder.  

“Most of the great community successes you hear of benefited from early and key support.” 

Grid capacity generally has become a huge issue in the renewable energy sector. National Grid, which manages the system, acknowledges the problem and says fundamental reform is needed as there are new solar and wind sites waiting up to 10 to 15 years to be connected due to a lack of capacity in the system.  

Hull sees the grid challenge as an opportunity: “The grid that we built 80 years ago was a national investment. It gave us hydro schemes and cheaper electricity. We are at that stage again as we rewire the country both for onshore and offshore wind.  

“There is an opportunity to socialise and democratise that investment on that level. We need to embed true community value when new opportunities like this arise.” 

He says support for community endeavour and the Scottish Government “have become stuck”, while the “sense of scale and opportunities” have changed, adding “they are bigger than they have ever been”. 

“This is a key time to identify what enabled the projects of 10 and 15 years ago to get on their feet.” 

Another barrier that communities need to overcome is attaining the knowledge and skills required to develop these projects. Camps explains that some communities have engineers on their boards along with the relevant staff, while others have none of that.  

In North Uist’s case, it had funding from Highlands and Islands Enterprise for just one development officer, who was responsible for all of the projects in the area, not just UistWind. “That was a major obstacle,” Camps says. 

“If we want to have a just transition that creates a fairer, greener future for all, then we need to have a community empowerment mechanism in place that will encourage the creation of wealth in our communities.” 

She points out there is a tendency in Scotland to see stronger community projects in areas where communities have been advocating for themselves, “like in the Highlands and Islands”. The way to ensure all parts of Scotland see the benefits is “simply through financing power”. 

One such mechanism that is already in place is CARES (Community and Renewable Energy Scheme), run by Local Energy Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government. The programme aims to accelerate progress towards the Scottish Government’s 2030 target by offering funding and support for community groups to install renewable energy generation.

While Camps says is it a “great thing”, she admits it “has very few people on the ground”. For example, it has two people working on shared ownership for the entirety of Scotland. 

“If you want to make the most of shared ownership opportunities, we need to be strategic in our approach and identify all the different projects that are coming up, and ensure these communities that are at the heart of where these projects are going to be situated have capacity on the ground to be able to negotiate their way into them. They need the legal support, otherwise these small communities will be negotiating with big law firms, which is quite intimidating.” 

Looking to the future of community energy endeavours in Scotland, Hull says communities need to be prepared for what he thinks is the next big opportunity for community wealth building – repowering infrastructure like wind turbines that have come to the end of their 25-year lifespan. This involves replacing old turbines with new ones and taking advantage of more powerful and efficient types of technology. 

He says they need to be supported in order “to be ready to come to the table”. 

“There is an interesting time coming as some of the more modest farms with commercially developed 30 to 50MW are going to need to repower. That presents an opportunity for communities to take shared ownership of those, or even take them over completely. 

“But they can only do this if they are prepared. We need to help the communities to the table. There are so many of them willing to take that risk and be involved but they simply aren’t getting to the table. 

“So, we have to create a mechanism that brings these partners together.”