£100m plan for community control of local projects
Revenues from the ScotWind programme should be ringfenced and used to help local communities to stakes in local energy projects, Michael Marra said today.
Speaking to the Energy4All conference in Dundee, Marra said the money could be used to offer low-cost finance to local groups to take equity stakes in local energy projects.
This would mean the wealth generated by those projects could be reinvested in the area through dividends to local people or lower energy bills.
Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra, right, said: “Scotland has been an energy nation for generations and powered by this region we are in today. Our natural resources have created enormous economic value and sustained communities across the country. But too often, much of the manufacturing, ownership and long-term economic value associated with those resources has ended up elsewhere. We cannot allow that to happen again.
“We should be ambitious about how much renewable electricity we generate, but success cannot simply be measured by the number of turbines in the water or panels on the ground. We should also ask whether Scottish businesses are growing, whether good jobs are being created and whether communities retain a meaningful share of the wealth being generated.
“Community ownership has an important role in that. I want communities and local authorities, wherever practical, to have the opportunity to take ownership stakes in energy projects. Community benefit payments have their place, but owning part of the asset is different.
“That is why Scottish Labour has proposed a £100 million Community Energy Fund using ScotWind revenues, providing low-cost finance so communities can develop projects themselves or take equity stakes in local energy developments. We also proposed stronger community benefit arrangements so that projects deliver lasting benefits for the places that host them. Power, money and control should be in the hands of local communities, and this policy is a way to do it.”
ENDS
Fuel poverty in a land of plenty is an utter outrage. It is the modern day equivalent of shipping out food whilst the people starve.
Scotland is the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy and the amount of energy produced continues to grow apace
But read your history about people going hungry whilst there is food to go round. Power from the glens for the glens, not!