Onshore wind sector deal

Community

Onshore wind in Scotland will continue to collaborate with local communities, building on good practices to enhance its existing ‘good neighbour’ approach through engagement at all stages of the project life cycle, offering impactful community benefits and practical routes to shared ownership.

The Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments were first introduced in 2014 and most recently updated in 2019. Between 2018 and 2022, over £106 million in community benefits have been committed from onshore wind projects. This will continue to rise as we realise our ambitions for growth over the coming decades. These community benefits are being made available to communities to support a diverse range of activities to improve the daily lives of people across Scotland. The community package, which includes community engagement, community benefits and shared ownership, will generate, circulate and retain more wealth in communities and localities.

The Scottish Government has adopted the internationally recognised Community Wealth Building^[14] approach to economic development as a means by which progress can be made towards realising its vision of a wellbeing economy.

This Community Wealth Building approach is reflected in the Scottish Government’s Onshore Wind Policy Statement 2022^[15] which commits to the principles of a just transition to a net zero economy, ensuring communities across Scotland feel the benefits of the energy transition. The policy statement sets out the benefits expected for local communities which this sector deal will deliver for all new renewable energy projects, including repowering and extensions to existing projects.

Collaborative action to support onshore wind

• The Sector and Government will collaborate with other relevant stakeholders to establish a standard approach to the financial management of community benefits funds by the end of 2024 to ensure:
  • Transparency in how funds are managed and spent,
  • Effective reporting of the impact of community benefit in Scotland’s communities,
  • That a national register of community benefit and community shared ownership is created and updated on an annual basis.
• The Sector, Government and other relevant stakeholders will collaborate to develop practical approaches to support and encourage community shared ownership models to assist developers, funders, local government and communities to engage in these opportunities, publishing a framework by the end of 2024.

Sector action to support onshore wind

• We will engage with communities from the earliest opportunity possible in the project development cycle to agree a community package that will meet or exceed the principles set out in the Scottish Government Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments 2019 and the Good Practice Principles for Shared Ownership from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments 2019.
• We will aim to provide an in-principle community benefit agreement prior to the Financial Investment Decision (FID) and will ensure that community benefit agreements become binding once FID is achieved.
• When projects are sold or there is a transfer of interest, we will ensure that any community benefit and community shared ownership agreements are maintained as a condition of the sale or transfer.
• Where aligned with community priorities, we will seek opportunities to provide support and funding that enables more ambitious projects that make a long-term strategic impact in supporting a just transition to net zero to be delivered. This could include measures such as energy efficiency improvement, solar PV panels, low carbon heating in local homes and the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in community spaces.
• By the end of 2024 we will look for opportunities where we can take a collaborative approach to co-ordinating community benefit funds with developers, owners and the local communities of neighbouring developments where there are common or overlapping areas of benefit.
• We will engage with key stakeholder organisations during the pre-planning application phase of projects to highlight community shared ownership opportunities and provide community bodies with sufficient time to investigate these opportunities.

Government action to support onshore wind

• We will continue to make the community benefits toolkit available on the Local Energy Scotland website and will update relevant case studies on an ongoing basis.