Community renewable schemes in Scotland struggling to achieve targets

Reported growth in Scotland's community renewable schemes does not give the full picture, according to Gregory Dix of Savills Energy, addressing this week's All Energy Conference in Aberdeen.
Dix, project manager at Savills Energy, says figures released earlier this year by the Energy Saving Trust that say Scotland is on track to achieve its community renewable targets rely too heavily on farms and estates, which account for some 33 per cent of the current total, with a further 31 per cent being accounted for under housing association developments and local business developments.
The report identified that, in June 2012, Scotland was on track to meet its target of 500MW of community and locally-owned renewable energy by 2020, with more than 40 per cent (or 204MW) operational in 2012. Says Dix: "These are impressive headline figures, but they are slightly muddled when one takes into account the fact that under the real definition of 'community' from the report the total capacity installed is only 26MW.
"Community schemes are, in fact, very challenging to set up, particularly while investors are still jittery about long-term returns on energy investments. They have to work hard to build a case and are often very poor in the scoping and pre-planning stage because of the lack of funds to obtain the right expertise. This explains why, when you drill down into the figures, you find the number of genuine community projects is actually very small."
The Energy Saving Trust report, published in Feb 2013, states that there are a further 265MW of projects consented, but some 167MW of this is accounted for by the Viking Wind Farm development in the Shetlands, of which, only a fraction can be attributed to being of benefit to the community.
Dix adds: "It remains to be seen whether the project will ever go to construction, as it will need the expensive interconnector from the Highlands to Shetland to be developed. Westminster has still not finalised changes to upcoming larger renewable scheme support under the proposed CfD (Contracts for Difference), which brings further uncertainty to renewable energy projects and Feed in Tariffs appear to remain open to Government tinkering on an almost monthly basis.
"It is the complex issues of such items as interconnection, lack of faith in Government stance on financial support and the challenges of planning and raising the funding that will always be a limitation on true Community energy developments.
"While the headline figures look good for communities, the underlying level of true community developments is very small. Schemes often fail, because of a lack of initial expertise in early stage scoping and following a proper development programme. This is principally down to a lack of experience and expertise, which can be bought in but at significant cost. 
"In Scotland the Scottish Government's Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) is seeking to try and help ensure that funding is available at all stages of the development process, which if properly used could start to open up many more viable and feasible projects on a true community basis," he concludes.
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