Listening is an extraordinary power. Anyone who has ever participated in community consultation processes will either be able to tell you how empowering it is to be truly listened to, or to tell you how undermining and debilitating it feels not to be heard – or perhaps even worse, to be heard, but not listened to.
When we embarked on the journey to establish the Scottish Community Coalition on Energy in 2024, it was with the intention of combining our voice with those of other membership organisations (Community Energy Scotland, DTA Scotland and Community Land Scotland) to be able to shout louder on behalf of the Scottish communities that we represent.
But anyone who has worked in policy and advocacy knows that no matter how loud your voice, sometimes it can be like shouting the same thing over and over again into a black hole. But little did we know that while we prepared to shout louder, at the same time, both the UK and Scottish Governments were readying themselves to listen.
Over the past 14 months since we issued our first Call to Action, our path has been smoothed by the openness of the Government teams to have open and frank conversations with us, and by their willingness to understand the challenges of the sector and what is in their powers to do about these. As a result, during this time we have seen astonishing progress on a number of the calls outlined in the five initial papers that we published. As someone remarked in a recent SCCE meeting: “I’ve never been involved in anything which gained so much traction so quickly.” While we continue to push forward our aims as a Coalition, it feels important to stop for a moment and celebrate the progress that has already been made on a number of our calls:
- 1. Address opportunities and challenges arising from repowering: both Scottish and UK Energy Ministers attended Community Energy Scotland’s Repowering conference in Spring 2025. More recently, the Scottish Government convened a round table on repowering and has plans to organise further round tables going forward. We look forward to continued engagement with both Scottish and UK Governments on this important issue.
- 2. Support increased uptake of shared ownership,
- 3. Require developers to provide community benefits, and
- 4. Mandate developers to report on community benefits: the UK Government held a Call for Views on making community benefits payments and community shared ownership mandatory for privately owned developments, as well as consulting about introducing mandatory reporting. This would have a transformative impact on the sector if implemented and we await further information on the next steps.
- 5. Updating Good Practice Principles for community benefits – earlier this year, the Scottish Government undertook a consultation on updating its Good Practice Principles for community benefits from both onshore and offshore developments, and is working in collaboration with the UK Government to ensure an aligned approach with the Call for Views mentioned above.
- 6. Community capacity building – a consistent theme throughout our papers has been the need for community capacity building, so we were delighted when Dr Alasdair Allen, then Energy Minister, announced a new strand of CARES funding for community capacity building at the CARES conference. We hope this will be a long term commitment and also hope to see a similar commitment from UK Government and GB Energy alongside funds for projects.
From our original proposals, there are still a number of areas that we would like to see progress on:
- 1. Creation of a Scottish Government working group on community energy to create a roadmap to accelerate progress in the community energy sector, including adequate support and a review of government ambition and how this is delivered.
- 2. Scottish Government to set a wholly owned community energy target to demonstrate clear ambition and provide certainty for investors – this should be distinct from the current ‘Local and Community Energy’ target, which encompasses a wide range of ownership types that do not have the same local economic and social impact as true community energy.
- 3. Creation of a Scottish Community Wealth Fund that developers of energy generation, storage and infrastructure projects would contribute to. Communities across Scotland would be able to access this fund to support the development of revenue generating assets, thereby supporting a Just Transition.
- 4. Give priority to community energy on public land – the Scottish Government should ensure that all new and renewed leases on public land and buildings are offered in the first instance to community energy projects.
- 5. Priority access to the grid for community energy – UK Government should use their powers to ensure that new and repowering community projects are able to obtain required grid space, whether this is through ringfencing of space on the grid or ‘designation’ of community energy in the grid connection process.
- 6. Minimum price guarantee for community energy – whether this is through a floor price mechanism or a simplified CfD, there is a need for long term income security for community-led energy organisations to be able to secure finance for new and repowering projects.
- 7. Bespoke finance – there is a need for bespoke, affordable and patient financing for community energy, and particularly for community stakes in shared ownership deals.
- 8. Creation of a community benefits champion team – we argued that there is a need for Community Benefits Champion posts that can proactively reach out to communities associated with any development, directly engage in negotiations with developers to maximise community benefits funds from developments, and build the capacity and skills of the local communities to engage in discussions and administer funds.
There is still work to do, still barriers to overcome and still a long way to go before we have the fertile environment that our community group members need to take action on energy. But it is important that we pause once in a while and celebrate our achievements.
These achievements have only been possible for three reasons. Firstly because we brought together the relatively limited resource each of our organisations had to work on policy and advocacy. Doing so had multiple additional benefits, including building more collaborative ways of working between our organisations and identifying just how much alignment there was between us on policy issues. Secondly, because we received support, guidance and input from many of our community organisation members, as well as a whole host of other partner organisations including Scottish Community Finance, Local Energy Scotland and Foundation Scotland. When we collaborate as a sector, we are stronger. And finally, because in the Community Energy Teams at UK and Scottish Governments and GB Energy, we have encountered teams of dedicated civil servants committed to listening. Thank you for using this power wisely.
