Implementation Lead(s): Scottish Government; Scottish Renewables; Local Energy Scotland;

Locations: All Scotland

Further reading:
Scottish Government Energy

Community and Renewable Energy Scheme

Renewable Energy Investment Fund

Environmental Mitigation: None required

Ongoing Activity and Milestones:
We have reached our community and locally owned target of 500 MW by 2020, five years early.  As at end September 2015, an estimated 508 MW of community and locally owned energy capacity was operational in Scotland. Our commitment to community energy remains undiminished with new targets of 1 GW of community and locally owned by 2020 and 2 GW by 2030.  In addition we will ensure that by 2020, at least half of newly consented renewable energy projects will have an element of shared ownership.

Support Scottish Renewables protocol for community benefits from onshore wind.

Encourage commercial developers to implement the Scottish Government ‘Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Development’.

We published a new Community Energy Policy Statement in September 2015.
We published Good Practice Principle for Shared Ownership of Onshore Renewable Energy Developments in September 2015.

Going forward we want to empower communities to reap the benefits from more localised energy  by supporting new models of provision that permit a greater community stake in the energy system thus retaining more value locally.  The key mechanism for doing that is our Local Energy Challenge Fund which will finance the demonstration of innovative local energy projects across Scotland. Four projects were successful in the first round and a further nine in the second round.