Energy / Energy projects being ‘done to us rather than with us’, community council chair says
Tingwall, Whiteness and Weisdale community council chair Andrew Archer attended a roundtable event at the Scottish Parliament on the impact of major energy infrastructure
“ENERGY needs to be part of Shetland’s future, but it needs to be done in a way that is sensitive to our environment, respects other sectors such as fishing and tourism and in a way where the community shares the benefits.”
That is the view of Tingwall, Whiteness and Weisdale community council chair Andrew Archer as he reflected on attending a roundtable event at Holyrood last week on the impact of major energy infrastructure.
He was one of a handful Shetland community council chairs at the event, which featured representatives of communities from all over Scotland.
The Rural Scotland Convention on Major Energy Infrastructure was organised by Highland councillor Helen Crawford, and it was attended by cabinet secretary for climate change and energy Gillian Martin as well as some other MSPs.
Crawford said before the event last Tuesday that the convention wants to see a clear national energy policy, and a pause on major applications until that plan exists.
She said after the meeting that Martin had agreed to establish a forum to directly involve communities in discussions around the development of National Energy System Operator’s (NESO) strategic spatial energy plan.
However Martin is reported as saying it is “not sustainable” to pause energy projects, which developers say are an important element of the push to net zero.
Archer said the process started in the Highland region last summer where a convention of community councillors wrote a “unified statement” calling for a pause in these developments while a planning enquiry commission examines their impact on rural communities.
Issues in that region have included plans for a new pylon network which would span more than 100 miles between Beauly and Peterhead.
Locally there are plenty development on the horizon, including new overhead lines, substations, a second HVDC subsea cable and wind farms – while there are two offshore wind farms proposed to the east of Shetland.
As well as conventions in the Highlands there have also been ones held in the north east and south regions of Scotland.
Archer said it was important to stress that this is not a “NIMBY” [not in my back yard] backlash” against developments.
“The statement recognises the reality of climate change and the need for action,” he added.
“The statement is an attempt to galvanise our elected representatives to recognise that this change is being done in a very harmful way, with little thought to the impact on the communities affected.”
Archer said the community councils that were at the parliament event on Tuesday “feel that they can only change things if they come together and make it clear to whoever is in government that the current approach is hugely damaging”.
“There is a growing feeling in rural communities in Scotland that the myriad energy projects that are happening across Scotland are being done to us rather than with us and that they are happening with no overall plan in place,” he added.
Archer also said that one of the attendees on Tuesday described the situation as a “modern-day land-grab” as developers scramble to get their share of what is on offer.
“In that scramble, communities feel that they are ignored, as the landscape and resources around them are exploited by others for profit,” he continued.
Locally, Archer pointed to the ongoing energy development – which stands to stretch into the years ahead – and said there is a “sense of a creeping industrialisation of the landscape” in Shetland.
“In our community council area, Tingwall, Whiteness and Weisdale, we already have Viking in the north of the area, all the hideous poles through the Tingwall Valley and they will shortly be joined by the Mossy Hill windfarm,” he said.
“After that we have the prospect of the ammonia plant at Tagdale and the huge pylons north from Kergord.”
Archer added that Tingwall, Whiteness and Weisdale aims to take the issue to the Association of Shetland Community Councils in June with the hope that “community councils will the support the call for a pause in these developments while their wider impact is reviewed”.
Shetland Central councillor Moraig Lyall listened into Tuesday’s meeting, and she said representatives of community councils from “Caithness to the Borders and Dumfries, and from East Lothian to Ayrshire, spoke passionately about multitude of impacts they are facing”.
“My key takeaway message was all rural parts of Scotland are facing the same thing, that we are facing here, and that there’s a real strength in working together to try and change things,” she said.
Lyall also said she has been working with some local community councils to potentially organise a convention in Shetland similar to those that have been held in Highland, Borders and Aberdeenshire.
“We don’t want everything and everything to happen just because we might get a couple of million quid out of it,” the councillor continued.
“We need to be sure that A) it’s needed, B) it’s in the right place and C) then we can speak talking about how we can ensure that it’s making a difference for Shetland.”
Lyall said Martin become “extremely defensive” at Tuesday’s event and only attended for half an hour, but a Scottish Government spokesperson said it was always planned that the cabinet secretary would attend for 30 minutes.
The spokesperson added that “it is vital that communities who see the most developments should be directly benefiting from them, including through shared ownership opportunities and community benefits”.
“The power to mandate community benefits is reserved to the UK government, with all arrangements in Scotland on a voluntary basis, which is why the Scottish government has been pressing successive UK governments to mandate community benefits from mature onshore renewables,” the spokesperson added.
Last week first minister John Swinney took aim at the UK energy market when faced with criticism against the Scottish Government’s new proposed recommended community benefit pay-outs for onshore wind.
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