Saturday 13 December 2025
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Achieving community benefit is hard work and requires communities to overcome differences over divisive energy projects

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Wind turbines on a hill overlooking a rural landscape with scattered houses and green fields under a cloudy sky.
  • The Shetland Community Benefit Fund is the largest of its kind in the UK
  • Those behind the fund share the lessons learned from what was a 15-year long process
  • SSE says it has a long standing commitment toward providing community benefit
  • This feature is part of the Powershift project, a collaborative journalism initiative that investigates how Scotland’s green energy transition communities and power dynamics across the country
A landscape featuring multiple wind turbines on a hilly terrain during sunset, with a winding road and a small body of water in the foreground.
One single turbine from the Viking wind farm connects Shetland to global, national and local impacts that are often overlooked. This is the first part of a small series of articles, contributed by Erin Rizzato Devlin as part of our PowerShift project, that investigates the challenges of the transition to net zero taking into account impacts in Shetland, Chile or China.
  • As part of the Power Shift project, we publish articles from across Scotland on how fair the transition to net zero really is
  • Shetland’s experiences are not unique as this account from North Lewis demonstrates
  • Power Shift is a collaborative project of 10 local news organisations from across Scotland, including Shetland News, with support from the Tenacious Journalism awards
Illustration of a rural landscape with wind turbines, solar panels, and houses, promoting an investigation into Scotland’s green energy boom by The Scottish Beacon.
Rural communities say the transition to green energy is leaving them sidelined. Over coming weeks Shetland News, and its partners in the Power Shift project, will be exploring how fair the energy transition really is; from community benefit and shared ownership to accountability and the planning system
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