AS WINTER DRAWS IN: People are catching hypothermia in their own homes, missing meals to top up the meter and burning their own floorboards as fuel

Hamilton Alex Cole-Hamilton outside the surgery 5

LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton ups heat on First Minister John Swinney.

By Bill Heaney

When companies generate renewable energy, they are expected to give money back to the local community, but the amount of cash that we are talking about is pitiful, because the rules have not changed in more than a decade, LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton told the Scottish Parliament this week.

And all the while, people are still shivering in the shadow of turbines, unable to heat their homes, he added.

Mr Cole-Hamilton asked the First Minister: “Will the Scottish Government listen to the Liberal Democrats, to Highland Council and to Shetland Islands Council and will it change those rules to cut energy bills for local people?”

John Swinney told MSPs: “I have a lot of sympathy with Mr Cole-Hamilton’s point. The issue of community benefits arising out of wind farm developments is regulated by the UK, and we have been pressing for some time to mandate community benefits from mature onshore renewables technologies and to create greater benefit for communities, particularly in relation to the reduction of fuel bills.

“I am sympathetic to his point, but it is an issue that the Government has pressed the UK Government on, and we will continue to do so.”

Alex Cole-Hamilton told him: “I was in north Edinburgh with Ed Davey and Councillor Sanne Dijkstra-Downie and we met Edinburgh College apprentices who are being trained for good green jobs installing home insulation, solar panels and heat pumps.

“Those technologies are ready to go and they are at the heart of Liberal Democrats’ realistic plan to halve household energy bills by 2035.

“John Swinney’s own independent advisers now say that his Government is extremely unlikely to meet its fuel poverty target.

“They found people catching hypothermia in their own homes, missing meals to top up the meter and burning their own floorboards as fuel.

“The Scottish Government’s consultation on the amount that energy companies give back closed six months ago, but nothing has changed.

“Under Liberal Democrat proposals, there are millions of pounds out there that could warm homes across Scotland. When will the First Minister change those rules?”

The First Minister told him: “The existing arrangements, which are specified by the U K Government, are non-mandatory. As a consequence, there is a limit. It is one of the examples of the constitutional point that I make.

“I am very sympathetic to the member’s point, but I cannot exercise powers that I am not legally entitled to exercise. That is one of the limitations of the constitutional arrangements.

“I am absolutely with Mr Cole-Hamilton in wanting to use the energy wealth of Scotland, which is absolutely beyond dispute—we all agree about that—and I am absolutely with him on the desire to eradicate fuel poverty.”

Mr Swinney said that in the summer, he spent some time on the island of Yell in Shetland, where he saw an excellent example of a community wind farm that is creating real benefit in the locality and is owned by the community.

He added: “Such models can be delivered where there is community ownership, and the Scottish Government enabled that development to be undertaken on Yell.

“I then went to the main island in Shetland and saw a colossal wind farm—the Viking Energy project—that is not delivering the right level of benefit to the community, nor is it eradicating fuel poverty.

“People in Shetland are living cheek by jowl with one of the largest wind farms in Europe while paying the highest fuel bills and living in fuel poverty.

“The powers to arrest that do not rest in this Parliament. They rest with the UK Government. I am determined—and I am very keen to work with Mr Cole-Hamilton—to get those powers here so that we can do something about it for the people of Shetland and the people of west Edinburgh.”