Lewis crofters welcome renewable subsidy plan
THE FOUR Lewis townships that have applied to the Crofting Commission for permission to develop community-owned wind turbines on their common grazings have welcomed the announcement that ‘remote island wind’ projects will be eligible to bid for subsidy in the next round of the ‘Contracts for Difference’ auction in 2019, writes Mark Entwistle.
However, while they have welcomed the announcement that up to £557 million of support will be available, representatives from the crofting townships have stressed that the community’s rights must be protected while multinationals such as EDF Energy seek to maximise their business opportunities in the islands.
Renewables developments in the Outer Hebrides, Shetland and Orkney will all be in line for potential support in 2019.
In a joint statement, representatives from the crofting townships of Sandwick North, Sandwick East, Melbost and Branahuie, and Aiginish also called on MP Angus Brendan MacNeil and MSP Alasdair Allan to support their case as they once again ask for the Crofting Commission to make a decision on their Section 50B applications, in which the townships are asking for the right to go ahead with turbines on their common grazings.
Lewis Wind Power hopes to develop 36 turbines on the ground around Stornoway but the four townships have rival ambitions for nine of their own turbines, which would be 100 per cent community-owned, in some of the same spots.
Last Thursday, the townships’ representatives said: ‘We warmly welcome the decision by the UK government to include the islands in the next CfD auction, which finally lifts the uncertainty that was hanging over the interconnector. We now call upon the council, the MP and the MSP to work with our townships to ensure the maximum benefit to the community and the local economy from the interconnector. That can only come from the communityowned wind farms which we propose and which will deliver between 10 and 20 times the benefit of the EDF/LWP wind farm offer.
‘Without such communityowned wind farms, the interconnector will be a gigantic missed opportunity for the islands. That is why we submitted our Section 50B applications to the Crofting Commission and why we will continue to work to deliver community wind farms on our grazings.’
Land reformer, writer and professor Alastair McIntosh has spoken out in support of crofters when it comes to the rights to the land and called for a scale of development that is in keeping with the place.
He said: ‘To my mind there’s a world of difference between a wind farm that a community really feels it owns, which is run by and for the local community, and one that it feels is imposed by lairds and corporations.’