Between 2019 and 2024, Scotland’s onshore wind sector made an estimated £5.6 billion in post-tax profits. Around 73% of that profit – £4.1 billion – is estimated to have been paid in dividends to corporate shareholders, with £729 million of that to companies owned by private equity or based in tax havens. During that same time, only around £147m in total in community benefit was paid by developers to communities near to those windfarms.
These were some of the key findings of research from the Centre for Local Economies (CLES), commissioned by us along with Community Land Scotland and Uplift. The findings in the report: Blown Away: following the money in Scotland’s onshore wind sector, showed clearly just how much money from commercially owned onshore wind farms is leaving not just the communities that they’re near to but also Scotland itself, and also put paid to the idea that there isn’t enough money from onshore wind to go round.
If communities had had a 20 per cent ownership stake in those commercially owned onshore wind farms, as is the norm in Denmark, CLES calculated that they would have made around £827m in total income over the same five years, or £165m per year. However, just 0.4% of Scotland’s entire onshore wind capacity was in shared ownership as of last year (1). That’s a huge missed opportunity for community wealth building in Scotland.
CLES also looked at levels of community benefits being received by communities near to commercial wind farms. Community benefits are voluntary payments made by an energy developer to the community (or more than one community) located near a development. There’s no community ownership involved. The Scottish Government currently recommends that developers pay £5000 per MW of installed capacity per year to the nearby community or communities. This is voluntary though, not mandatory. We argue that it should be mandatory and should also be index linked, which would mean that this figure, first set by Forestry and Land Scotland in 2010, would actually now be £7930 (according to the Bank of England inflation calculator)
However, Local Energy Scotland data on current community benefit package values for 261 operational onshore windfarms in Scotland suggest actual payments of £3,167 per MW per year, for a total value of £29.4m per year across Scotland. Over five years, this is equivalent to around £147m in total in community benefit to nearby communities. If £5,000/MW had been paid to communities across all installed capacity over the five years that CLES looked at profits from onshore wind, then communities would have received a total of £238m. Of course, if the index-linked amount that we’re calling for had been paid, this amount would have been even greater.
Community benefits comparison (2). The graph on the left shows the amount of community benefit received by communities near to onshore windfarms in a year, compared to what would have been received if the Scottish Government’s good practice benchmark of £5000/MW/year had been applied by all developers, and the amount that would have been received if that benchmark had been linked to inflation from when it was first used by Forestry and Land Scotland in 2010.
Going on to compare community benefit from commercially owned wind farms with income brought into the local area from 100% community-owned turbines shows starkly the huge difference that community ownership makes – and how much more beneficial it is.
Data shared by Huntly, Udny, Point and Sandwick, and Galson community-owned turbines, for example, showed an average income of £261,723 per MW per year, 100% of which went into the nearby community. That’s 52 times higher than the recommended £5,000/MW per year for community benefit payments from commercial developers.
CLES’s research confirms the enormous benefit that community ownership of onshore wind farms brings, compared to those owned by private companies – even when those commercial developers do set up community benefit funds.
Communities like Huntly in Aberdeenshire, Fintry in Stirlingshire, Lewis in the Western Isles and Tiree in the Inner Hebrides have used the income generated by their turbines to improve housing, provide community transport, re-open or set up local pubs, cafes, small business units and community gardens – which also bring good, local jobs.
In Huntly their community owned wind turbine has given them the income for a cinema in the town, and on the Isle of Tiree they used the income from theirs to build business units, providing permanent space for a hairdresser, an art gallery and a creative social enterprise, allowing small businesses to thrive where they once struggled for space.
And as well as funding local facilities directly, these communities are also using the income from their turbines to give grants to other local organisations, like those working with young people, or addressing social isolation or carrying out local environmental projects – multiplying the benefits across the community.
The results of this research confirm the weaknesses in the market-knows-best approach to the energy transition that has for so long been the orthodoxy, and gives us robust evidence to use as we continue calling on the Scottish and UK Governments to urgently create the conditions for more community-owned energy so that the benefits of the renewables revolution can be shared more fairly across Scotland and the UK.
(1) In 2025, 10.5GW of Scotland’s installed renewable electricity capacity came from onshore wind. 42MW of that was in shared ownership.
(2) These figures are based on capacity data from Local Energy Scotland for 261 operational onshore windfarms (total capacity 9,279MW)
