Council / A chance to shape discussions about community wealth building
Councillors accept the findings of the energy transition task force and hear the time to act is now
COUNCILLORS have endorsed a set of key principles that could play a crucial role in Shetland getting a fair share from future renewable energy projects in the isles.
A report by the energy transition task force, setting out the steps Shetland should consider in negotiations with the various companies that have an eye on developing local energy resources, was presented to a meeting of the full council on Wednesday.
Presenting the findings of the A Fair Share for Shetland report, chair of the task force Neil McInroy, said it was crucial for Shetland to have clarity over what exactly the islands wanted to gain from the renewable energy industry.
McInroy, an economist and specialist in community wealth building, added decisions made now would have repercussions on future generations as the world moves from fossil fuels to renewables.
“You need to be pro-active to get a fair share from those developments”, he told councillors.
Council chief executive Maggie Sandison meanwhile said talks with governments and the regulator Ofgem were ongoing to secure a social electricity tariff (the so-call Shetland tariff).
The paper, which will influence the council’s draft energy strategy and inform council leaders in their negotiations with politicians and industry, brings for the first time some clarity on how the community could benefit from the ongoing developments.
There was a broad welcome of the report in the chamber, however, council leader Emma Macdonald and her depute Gary Robinson raised a word of caution by reminding colleagues the council’s powers of influencing developments were limited.
There were several calls for special safeguards for the fishing industry faced with an ever growing offshore wind sector.
Shetland Central councillor Davie Sandison, who was not a member of the task force, welcome the report as “a good toolkit at our disposal” and noted there was some urgency in putting these principles into action.
Speaking to Shetland News after the council meeting, McInroy said the world was at a crisis point – economically, in relation to climate as well as democratically – adding this offers the opportunity to take influence and change direction.
And with the sheer scale of renewable developments proposed for Shetland on and offshore, the isles could be in a position in securing community wealth, such as shared ownership, that would go significantly further than community benefit payments.
“It’s a juggernaut,” he said. “I think there are elements you can slow, there are elements that you can limit, and there are elements where you can change direction.
“Community wealth building is a range of different ways by which communities have a genuine, real and meaningful stake in the wealth that is being produced locally.”
This has happened to a certain extent with the arrival of the oil industry in Shetland in 1970s, McInroy continued, citing land ownership, disbursement payment and well-paid jobs through a local supply chain as examples.
However, as the world was changing its energy systems from fossil to renewables, there was an opportunity to gain more for communities.
“We have a crisis, an economic, a climate crisis, a democratic crisis. The world is at an inflection point, moving from an old fossil-fuelled, unsustainable economic model to something that is new,” he said.
“We are not there yet, and energy renewables is a key plank in that economic societal energy transition.
“This [Shetland] is one of the windiest places in the world; it is relatively accessible, and it is in a western democracy. The pattern of things happening here does relate to many other places, and (…) it affects future generations.
“The paths we are threading here is new – it’s all pioneering territory, there is no blueprint, we kind of making it up as we go along.
“It is important for Shetland to realise that, because there is the chance to shape the nature of things because it is not fixed.”
Chair of the council’s development committee Dennis Leask said: “This document represents a huge amount of work over a short period of time, and lays the groundwork for our negotiations with energy developers.
“Fort the first time it sets out a clear menu of options on what Shetland expects from a fair share.”
The task force was formed in summer after councillors rejected an initial draft of the Shetland energy strategy in March this year.
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