The Herald
30 Nov 2025
Scotland’s shift to green energy promises prosperity, but our Power Shift investigation reveals a stark divide: while some communities thrive on renewables, others feel sidelined, overwhelmed and unheard in a system where wealth too often flows outwards.
On the windswept island of Tiree, a four-hour ferry ride from Oban, a solitary community-owned wind turbine – affectionately known as Tilley – has powered local development since 2009. In that time it has generated £4 million for a community of just 650 people, funding harbours, childcare, youth services, housing, broadband, a petrol station, business units and more. “We’ve got a wind turbine right now that is providing the vast majority of funding, which allows my staff and I to be here to do all of these things,” says Tiree Community Development chief officer Phyl Meyer.
But the project is increasingly fragile. After multiple repairs, Tilley is now uninsurable, and a serious failure would wipe out the Trust’s main income stream. “If that turbine breaks tomorrow,” says Phyl, “we are not insured for loss of business. There will be a cliff edge that we will fall off without more core funding.” The trust is now considering solar arrays as a more reliable source of future income.
The wider system is also stacked against the island. Tiree currently produces far more electricity than it uses, yet residents can’t buy power directly from their own turbine. Tilley’s output must be sold to an energy supplier, which then sells it back at a profit. To change this, the Trust is developing a local energy co-operative based on the ‘Energy Local’ model, allowing members to use locally generated electricity first at an agreed internal rate.
The hurdles are mainly technical: finding a supplier willing to facilitate the scheme, agreeing a pricing structure, and completing the island’s long-delayed rollout of smart meters. Current regulations also limit such schemes to a single transformer, so the first pilot will be small. But if UK-level rule changes go ahead, Meyer says the co-op could eventually expand across the whole island – finally allowing every household to benefit more directly from the renewable energy produced around them. Tiree’s experience captures both the promise and the precarity of community energy – and it reflects a mixed story across Scotland. The reporting from our Power Shift project found places where renewables have become a vital source of local funding, and others where people feel overwhelmed or shut out. These contrasts show that the issue isn’t simply success or failure, but an imbalance and sense of injustice. So what would it take to ensure communities don’t feel left behind?
What the Power Shift series has revealed
We heard from many that communities feel things are being done to them, not with them. In Lewis, some people are “angry” at being squeezed out of interconnector space while global firms dominate the wind rush. A resident in Beauly captured the strain many places feel under rapid expansion: “We are drowning under a mountain of planning applications… It’s horrendous, with huge negative impacts on mental health and wellbeing. It is tearing our communities apart.” And in Carsphairn, 80% of the land is now forestry or wind, leaving roads overwhelmed and residents feeling unheard by distant corporate owners.
Concerns weren’t rooted in opposition to renewable energy itself. Rather, people questioned whether the benefits were being shared fairly and whether communities had any real influence. What they wanted was clearer democratic processes, a stronger local voice, and a system where wealth generated in their areas stays there instead of flowing outwards with not enough reward for local people.
Genuine community ownership as a proven path to equity
One solution to the division is community-owned renewables. Research from Platform London and Equitable Energy shows how community-owned projects generate vastly more local value than corporate developments of similar size.
They found that Tilley – a single 900kW community turbine – delivers over 100 times more economic value per unit of capacity than the privately owned Beinn an Tuirc wind farm, despite being only around one per cent of its size. In Shetland, the community-owned Garth turbine on Yell produces around 90 times more value per megawatt for local people than the multinational-owned Viking Energy development beside it. The three small community turbines on the Galson Estate on Lewis support 18 employees and have delivered £600k to community organisations, with more on the way from West Coast Community Energy.
The Scottish Community Coalition on Energy is calling on the Scottish Government to make this a national priority and set a target of 1GW of community-owned energy in Scotland by 2030. In their manifesto recommendations they argue that, to build public support and deliver a just transition, Scotland must “enable and support increased community ownership and shared ownership of new and existing electricity and heat infrastructure, and fair distribution of the wealth that is being generated and consolidated through renewables.” Flick Monk, Community & Public Energy Campaigner at Platform says: “Right now, the energy transition isn’t serving Scotland; communities are given little say over local projects, private developers extract wealth to overseas shareholders, and communities get crumbs in return. But community energy ownership – where communities own and operate their own wind, solar and hydro projects – can be truly transformative…
“Scottish Government support for community and public ownership remains woefully inadequate, stymieing this huge opportunity. We need a clear 2030 target for community and public energy, backed up with long-term financial support from both governments. We also need local councils to play their part in local energy generation, following tried and tested examples in Europe where local municipalities own wind and solar farms to fund public goods and services. Scotland is an energy rich nation, and our incredible natural resources should be ensuring warm homes, decent public services and resilient local economies.”
The need for fairer financial mechanisms
Reporting in this series has shown that current community benefit payments are too small, too variable and too detached from real impact. The rate of £5,000 per MW per year hasn’t risen since 2010; meaning it’s now worth around 40% less in real terms. Shetland’s experience shows £5k/MW is no longer fair for large, high-output sites. The equivalent today would be closer to £7,500 per MW, and some campaigners are calling for higher, production-linked payments.
Working with local people
Across Scotland, we’ve seen how division often grows because communities feel overwhelmed or sidelined, but when people are involved early and meaningfully in decision-making, outcomes improve for everyone. As one Shetland respondent to our survey put it: “Actual community engagement would be ideal – instead of false engaging when the project is already going ahead.”
Over the past year, the Local Storytelling Exchange and Sustainability First, has explored this more deeply with people living along the east coast of the UK – from Aberdeenshire down to East Anglia – all of whom face National Grid upgrade proposals in their areas.
They worked with residents of varied ages, backgrounds and political views. What united them was a desire for clarity, fairness and a genuine say in shaping major changes.
As Clare Harris, Scotland lead for the Local Storytelling Exchange, explains: “These sessions saw residents talk honestly about how energy developments made them feel; some felt passionately that a modernised energy system was essential for all our futures. Others were vehemently opposed. During in-depth discussions over the course of the past year, they have discussed how they want communities to be engaged in the changes that are happening where they live and the ways in which they want to shape community benefit.
“These were not easy discussions; but what has come through is a sense that big changes need to be fair, collaborative and leave a lasting positive legacy. Communities, whoever they include, need to be meaningfully consulted, early, clearly and honestly.They need to be heard. More than that, however, they need a stake.”
East Lothian offers one example of how community-led engagement can give people that sense of control. A cluster of large-scale developments – including Eastern Green Link 1 – has pushed local leaders in East Lammermuir Community Council (ELCC) to bring developers and residents together and to share joined-up information throughout the planning process. Information, they say, is power.
ELCC is also one of several councils forming the new charity East Lothian Community Benefits, set up to manage the substantial funds being offered as part of the projects. Its focus is ensuring the area is left better than before. Landscape-scale nature regeneration, improved local transport and a programme to insulate and heat local homes all form part of the community’s ambitions. “We’re at a critical moment,” says ELCC chair Chris Bruce, “and need to bring pressure on big developers to think differently.”
Strengthening local journalism also matters. In news deserts, tensions can too easily be inflamed on social media without trusted information. The hyperlocal outlets that make up the Scottish Beacon can help communities navigate complex planning processes and technical jargon and cut through misinformation.
As Sarah Ade, editor of the Glenkens Gazette says: “Hyper-local, independent news – especially in print format, like the Glenkens Gazette – is of huge value in today's fast-paced, primarily digital world. It offers readers the chance to find out about, and contribute to, discussion on topics of genuine impact to them and their community. It offers a platform for people to unite in a shared vision and to share values; it offers a sense of community in an increasingly fragmented world. And as an independent news platform, it offers a voice that is purely there to raise issues relevant to the community it serves, in a non-sensationalist way that fosters constructive debate on issues of great importance and so brings communities together instead of fragmenting them.”
Fixing the infrastructure to share the benefits not the burdens
A fairer energy system also depends on fixing the infrastructure that determines who gains and who loses from Scotland’s rapid expansion of renewables. Scotland paid £252 million in constraint payments in the first two months of 2025 alone, heading towards nearly £1.8 billion a year simply to switch turbines off when the grid can’t take the power. That is money spent not generating energy, while households in some of the windiest parts of Europe remain in fuel poverty. Better local infrastructure such as household battery storage, community-scale storage and load-shifting schemes would allow excess wind to be used locally, reducing bills and strengthening energy security.
Grid access is another fault line. On Lewis, community developers are being squeezed out of the planned 1,800MW SSEN interconnector – one of the starkest examples of inequity uncovered in the Power Shift series. One solution would be to introduce mandatory community allocations or “community first rights” on new grid capacity, ensuring local projects are not pushed aside by corporate-scale proposals.
Beyond the cables themselves, communities are calling for investment in the everyday infrastructure that makes large energy projects viable. On Lewis, up to 1,500 incoming workers are expected to place new pressure on schools, healthcare and transport, yet local services face cuts rather than reinforcement.
A joined-up investment model – one that requires energy developments to contribute to the public infrastructure they rely on – is also essential if the transition is to share benefits rather than pile on burdens. For many communities, this imbalance is increasingly understood as a question of environmental justice: who pays the price of Scotland’s energy expansion, and who reaps the rewards?
As Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift says: “Right now, the energy system isn’t working for people in Scotland. Communities are seeing wind farms go up – but the profits go elsewhere, while energy workers have for years been promised green jobs but most are still waiting.
“Now is the time to demand that more of the work and the wealth generated by renewables flows to communities here, particularly as so many people are struggling with unaffordable energy bills and strained public services.
“This is an enormous chance for Scotland to build wealth and resilience – whether that’s through communities owning a share of new projects or creating a wealth fund from renewables so that everyone benefits.
“Scotland’s politicians need to know that the status quo is unacceptable and that people demand a fairer energy system. If the country is going to generate all this power in future, it should own some of the rewards.”
A just transition means enabling communities to lead
What the Power Shift series makes clear is that Scotland’s renewable transition isn’t struggling because communities oppose clean energy – it’s struggling because the structures around that transition are uneven, opaque and too often designed without the people who are most impacted by the infrastructure. Ultimately this is about ownership and power.`
The challenge is to build a system where those outcomes aren’t dictated by geography, but by a consistent framework that values local involvement and keeps more of the wealth circulating where it’s generated.
Fairer grid rules, increased benefits, stronger community stakes in ownership, better investment in public infrastructure and a more transparent planning system are all essential. When done right, community-owned renewables is an opportunity for meaningful community wealth building, a topic currently being discussed at Holyrood – but that means a more strategic approach to putting communities first.
The opportunity is still enormous. Scotland has the resources, the expertise and the public support for a cleaner energy future. The question now is whether we can design the transition in a way that communities recognise as theirs – not something done to them, but something built with them, and ultimately, something that leaves them stronger.