Community benefits in the energy system
Examining policy, practice, and regional collaboration, this report identifies how community benefits in Scotland’s energy system can align with a just transition and equitable regional investment.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scottish Rural Action and Community Energy Scotland hosted a roundtable looking at a strategic approach to community benefits, in the context of a just transition. The roundtable participants allowed for a multi-disciplinary approach with expertise in areas including community development, economics, policy, energy sector, and business. This report reflects the points made during the roundtable discussion.
Download a strategic approach to community benefits in the energy system report (1MB, PDF)
Executive summary
Community benefits, in the context of the energy system, cover multiple motivations, mechanisms and delivery structures, from the funding communities generated through outright ownership of renewables schemes, to financial payments or in-kind contributions made by commercial developers of energy and transmission projects.
Benefits arising from community-owned energy schemes are generally recognised as a positive outcome for communities leading the transition to a low carbon future. Commercial community benefits, on the other hand, can be contentious. They are sometimes perceived as token philanthropy, or as an attempt to pressure communities into accepting major infrastructure, a perception compounded by the imbalance of power between communities and developers within both the planning and energy systems.
In Scotland, lack of standardisation and sharing of practice around commercial community benefits, coupled with the optional nature of payments and in-kind contributions from developers, has resulted in a patchwork landscape with some communities negotiating significant investment, while others lacking opportunity to do so.
In recent years, there has been increasing interest from regional stakeholders including local authorities, enterprise agencies and economic partnerships, in driving forward a strategic approach to community benefits within their areas. Ensuring a more predictable level of investment for communities over the medium and long term, with a more equitable distribution of investment, while safeguarding people, communities and the environment against potential negative impacts of energy developments.
The roundtable examined recent research, policy, and practice around community benefits to identify directions for stakeholders interested in developing a strategic response at regional or national level, and in deploying these benefits to support a just transition. The main points were:
Framing the policy narrative: Community benefits must be framed as investments in the context of a just transition, rather than as gifts, compensation, philanthropy or corporate social responsibility. The terminology around community benefits must reflect the substantial contribution communities make to shaping the energy system, and the co-dependency between thriving communities and Scotland’s ability to achieve net zero and economic ambitions.
- Benefits vs impact: While community benefits can be objectively defined for the purpose of setting strategy (what they are, their function, and how they are distributed) their impact is place and perception based. Communities need support to quantify the potential impact of energy development, positive and negative, as part of the process of negotiating meaningful community benefits which meet both community needs and energy policy aspirations.
- Outright community ownership provides the most meaningful community benefit and impact: the evidence to support this statement also points to the need for government to be ambitious in setting targets for community owned renewable energy developments, and in lifting barriers to these developments.
- Strategic approaches to community benefits in the energy system, whether at regional or national levels, must take into account the entirety of their scope and not be siloed into considering commercial onshore and offshore wind, transmission network, or community generated benefits as separate strands of investment. There are gains to be made for communities, for regions, and for developers, in streamlining approaches and processes.
- There is a need for standardisation of commercial community benefits from developers. While there is no universally applicable and future-proofed ‘minimum standard’ for commercial community benefits, a shift is required so that developers are clear about what community and regional stakeholder expectations are and are held accountable to meet those expectations.
- The importance of developing community capacity to establish structures to negotiate and deploy investment, geographically and to different interest groups, is invariably critical.
- Desired outcomes from community benefits investment require cross border collaboration. Both the UK and Scottish Governments must shift from an institutional pathway of centralisation towards empowering local government and regional stakeholders to work with communities on regional strategic approaches to community benefit generation and investment.
In partnership with
 Scottish Rural Action www.sra.scot |  Community Energy Scotland www.communityenergyscotland.org.uk |
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Download a strategic approach to community benefits in the energy system report (1MB, PDF)
