Why Scotland's Highlands are rebelling against renewable energy – and how to make it work for the people

Yet these communities are often seeing failing public services, school closures, the grim reality of the housing crisis, and some of the highest energy costs. Within this context, opposition to renewable developments in the Highlands reached a head when 53 community councils met in Inverness in August to raise their concerns.

It's important to properly acknowledge why these developments are happening. There is a critical need to decarbonise our economy to combat the climate emergency. Expanding renewable energy generation and transmission is a vital way of helping achieve this.

READ MORE: Our community borrowed millions to build wind turbines – but it’s paid off, big time

Foreign-owned renewable schemes

But this is not an excuse for business-as-usual economics, which sees decision-making, wealth and power concentrated in the hands of corporations and large landowners, rather than shared with local people.

Recent research by Future Economy Scotland and Common Wealth has shown the extent of corporate capture of the offshore developments in the latest ‘ScotWind’ leases. Seventy-eight per cent of ScotWind capacity is owned by parent companies headquartered outside the UK with foreign state-owned firms owning 12 per cent.

As Future Economy Scotland has argued, ScotWind profits will support public spending abroad, but not in Scotland. Offshore wind is an emerging sector, but it has an opportunity to be financially viable and socially just. It’s time to start thinking about how the ScotWind income could be used to drive community wealth building within Scotland.

READ MORE: Fears SNP's ScotWind at risk of collapse without Chinese firm MingYang's Highlands factory approval

Onshore wind in Scotland led the way in agreeing good practice on community benefits, including a voluntary benchmark figure for payments to local communities. However, given the increasing volume of developments and concern from communities, the existing community benefit framework is no longer fit for purpose.

A refresh of this framework is desperately needed to ensure that onshore developments are driving local rural development as strongly as they should. Too often, opportunities to host onshore projects are controlled by the small number of private landowners who own much of Scotland, with the possible returns from renewable projects driving land prices to ridiculous levels as with the case of the Griffin Forestry Estate selling for £145 million.

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Unsurprising resistance

While a handful of corporations enjoy exceptional power over renewable development, their contributions to revitalising the areas in which they operate need to be clarified.

Resistance to the wave of wind farms, pumped hydro, pylons, substations and battery storage – the main forms of renewable energy developments – is not surprising. Considering the lived experience of local communities and the extractive economic system which underlies these developments, you can understand the concerns.

However, there is a solution to this tension between green electricity and community resistance to the current scale of development – and it lies with ownership.

There needs to be considerably more community ownership of renewable developments. Research shows that, in Scotland, 64 per cent of people would support a community-owned energy development in their area, but only 40 per cent support a private enterprise.

This could be because, on average, community-owned turbines generate 34 times more income for local communities than privately owned ones. Or it could be that community-owned turbines mean empowerment, with local people making decisions that work for their local area, whilst contributing to the wider energy system.

Transforming the green economy

This is why the Scottish Community Coalition on Energy (SCCE) came together in 2024. We need to see a dramatic increase in community-owned renewable energy from 110 to 1,000 megawatts by 2030.

The income from this proposed gigawatt of community energy would be two-and-a-half times greater than the community benefit payments from all the onshore wind farms in Scotland today. Achieving it would be transformative for this country’s green economy.

The SCCE recognises that communities across Scotland are shouldering the burden of higher bills whilst seeing few benefits from hosting vast renewable developments. This has led to the proposal for a Scottish Community Wealth Fund, which would sit alongside local community benefit arrangements and would take additional contributions from developments for use in a strategic national fund.

The money raised would seed-fund more revenue-generating community projects around the country. This would enable places across the country to have a stake in renewable energy and secure long-term income for their local area.

We need a just transition to net zero that actually delivers just outcomes for local people. This means expanding community ownership, enhancing local community benefit arrangements, and establishing an independent national fund for communities so that everyone in Scotland can be part of the energy transition.

The simplistic depiction of renewables versus communities is a fallacy. It has the potential to be dangerous if this debate is co-opted by politicians looking to sow division and draw attention away from structural economic failings.

Securing future of renewables

We cannot allow regressive politics to undermine opportunities for a fairer economic system, nor damage our drive to decarbonise. Politicians and developers have to accept that communities must receive more to secure the future of renewable energy in Scotland.

The debate about such developments comes down to how we want our economy to work: should it continue as an extractive, corporate-led economy, or should we make it work for communities across Scotland?

We need to decarbonise and find more sustainable ways of producing energy. We also need to empower communities and reduce glaring inequality. Community-owned energy is an established model which can help achieve all of this.

Dr Josh Doble is director of policy at Community Land Scotland