Help to reduce impact of those dreaded bills

“I can understand why some people don’t see the relevance of a wind farm in the hills.”

PARTS OF Britain may be in the early days of an economic recovery, but for many the sound of an energy bill hitting the doormat is an unwelcome reminder of how strained household budgets are.

Where and who we get our energy from has seen intense debate, especially in rural Scotland, where too much household income is spent heating old, inefficient houses that are off the gas. So I can understand why some people don’t see the relevance of a wind farm in the hills.

The Westminster Government has recently chosen to remove some of the green energy support costs from our bills. This will only make a small difference in the short term, while an ongoing reliance on expensive fossil fuels will make us vulnerable to price rises, especially during an economic recovery when energy use always increases.

Instead of endangering green energy investment, governments and energy companies could help communities share in the financial benefits of renewables. This could ease the burden on some of the many Scottish households in fuel poverty.

Very few Scottish communities own the land that wind farms sit on compared to other countries across Europe. So instead, many wind farm developers offer a ‘community benefit fund’, as a way of sharing some of the income and involving communities in the project.

However, a joint venture with a wind farm developer, such as Fintry in Stirlingshire has entered into, allows communities to go much further, taking a proper ownership and profit share in the overall project, regardless of who owns the land.

Communities can then use their profits to invest in solar panels, heat pumps, biomass boilers and insulation, slashing their energy bills directly. Fintry is doing exactly this, taking the profits from their “one turbine share” in a wind farm on the hill to make houses in the village warmer and cheaper to run. That must be a good thing.

The Scottish Government wants to see community involvement in wind farms become the norm and has set a target of 500MW of community renewables by 2020. (the equivalent of around 10 larger wind farms). They have also set up ways to offer practical support and finance to communities wanting to go down this route.

Now is the time for communities to enter into these partnerships while sites are still available in landscapes with the right capacity to absorb larger scale wind farms. Angus in particular has one of the lowest levels of wind farm development of any area in Scotland and yet has one of the best wind resources. More wind means turbines work more efficiently potentially generating more profit for surrounding communities to share in.

Investment in wind farms will help slow the inevitable increase in fossil-fuelled electricity bills, but if there can also be a direct financial benefit to communities hosting projects now, then we can reduce the impact of those dreaded doormat bills even quicker.