Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead is understood to have tasked civil servants with developing proposals that would enable communities and other small developers to make planning applications to their councils without having to risk hundreds of thousands of pounds in the process.
Based on ideas put forward by Mackie’s ice cream chairman and community wind proponent Maitland Mackie, this is seen as removing what many believe is the main barrier to developing small wind projects. Mackie has long argued that such a scheme would prevent profits from being mopped up by the large utilities.
With a fund of around £10 million, he believes there would be scope to develop 3,000 small sites with handfuls of turbines, producing profits in the region of £1 billion. Most likely funded by private money, it is envisaged that successful applicants would pay back their borrowings with interest and that loans to rejected applicants would be forgiven.
Mackie said: “When you look at the planning costs, the size of finance required to actually build wind farms and the logistics of making it happen, it’s not surprising that landowners often take fright and sign away their land to major developers. The farmer is delighted to receive rent of £20,000 or £30,000 a year, but for that price the developers are walking away with half a million.
“Every month there’s more signed away to the major developers, and in another year or two it will be too late. It’s now or never.”
Backers argue that a government intervention would be particularly well timed now because it would meet the increased demand stemming from new so-called feed-in tariff rules introduced at the start of April that pay small developers guaranteed amounts for any electricity that they sell to the National Grid.
Mackie, who was converted to small wind after building three turbines to power his company’s Aberdeenshire headquarters, began pushing proposals for a loan fund after his previous scheme to start a revolution in community wind farms collapsed last year. He had tried to raise £10m from small investors to set up a development company that would have built wind farms in partnership with communities and landowners. After only raising £2.5m, he withdrew the proposals last January.
After a positive meeting with First Minister Alex Salmond on the subject last autumn, he was persuaded to join the government’s Community Renewables Implementation Group (CRIG), set up to maximise community involvement in renewables and including a wide range of industry stakeholders.
But Mackie told the Sunday Herald: “The members couldn’t see past their own interests. They couldn’t see why they should do anything to help the private sector, and I stepped down. But now there is a high-level, highly active team that is keen to push these ideas through.”
Under the government’s new plans, it is also envisaged that a group would provide guidance to small developers to help them navigate the process. This would most likely be done through the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) or the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society (SAOS).
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Mr Lochhead and Scottish Government officials recently met with Dr Mackie to discuss how rural communities can tap into Scotland’s renewables revolution.
“Dr Mackie’s input will contribute to our active thinking on measures to promote agri-renewables that help both rural businesses and local communities at the same time. We have yet to reach a conclusion on the way forward.”
