Contribution to just transition
Point and Sandwick Trust (PST) uses the profits from its community-owned wind farm to deliver wide-ranging social, economic and environmental benefits across the Western Isles, directly aligning with Scotland’s six Just Transition outcomes.
- Citizens, Communities and Place – Through sustained funding for local groups and facilities (e.g. Parkend to Branahuie Community Association Warm Hub, Bethesda Hospice, Point Youth Club, and Sandwickhill Development Committee), PST strengthens community cohesion, supports vulnerable groups, and invests in cultural, sporting and wellbeing activities that enhance local quality of life.
- Jobs, Skills and Education – PST supports education from primary through to higher education (e.g. Sgoil an Rubha, Stornoway Primary, UHI Western Isles Hydrogen Hub) and creates pathways into employment through supported posts and training (e.g. Western Isles Association for Mental Health, Urras Storas an Rubha). It also invests in skills development and project innovation through retained consultants and cultural education programmes such as Feis an Rubha.
- Fair Distribution of Costs and Benefits – By funding the Energy Support Unit and direct payments for fuel bills, PST helps alleviate fuel poverty and ensures that the benefits of renewable energy are shared locally, alongside projects such as the Fire Alarm Project and Home Repairs Service which reduces costs to vulnerable households.
- Business and Economy – PST reinvests in local economic resilience by supporting enterprises including An Lanntair arts centre, Lewis & Harris Auction House, and PS Tourism, as well as practical carbon-saving measures like LED bulb roll-outs with Tighean Innse Gall.
- Adaptation and Resilience – By backing the redevelopment of local assets such as the old Knock School into Urras Storas an Rubha’s community hub, PST fosters adaptive reuse of buildings, providing long-term spaces for social and economic activity.
- Environmental Protection and Restoration – PST is leading on ecological restoration through the Croft Woodlands Project, with over 200,000 trees already planted and a goal of one million by 2030, while also funding restoration of historic and natural assets (e.g. Garrabost Mill, St Columba’s Church, and Urras Eaglais na H-aoidhe).
Through this integrated approach, PST demonstrates how community energy revenues can be channelled into fairer, more resilient, and more sustainable local development and working to ensure that the transition to net zero delivers tangible and equitable benefits for people and place.
Contribution to regional heritage and local benefit
The community wind farm makes use of crofting land that was previously used for common grazings and for peat cutting, both declining economic activities, and uses it instead for wind energy generation.
As noted previously, this relatively small, 3-turbine project has provided more community income than the 215 turbines operating at corporate wind farm, Whitelee in the same time frame. It is proof that community ownership is much more beneficial than the conventional corporate wind farm model which has been pursued in Scotland (unlike countries such as Denmark where half the onshore wind farm output is community-owned). MW for MW, corporate and community wind farms result in the same GDP increase, but in terms of Gross National Income community wind farms are vastly more beneficial as they retain and recycle all their net income in their local economies and in Scotland as a whole.
Lessons Learned
Community energy projects can be of any type that is commercially viable; can be developed and operated just as cost-effectively. For example, PST required no additional subsidy as compared to corporate wind farms even the CARES loan is repaid at financial close; and projects can be developed at scale. The key project management tasks of site selection, wind analysis, environmental studies, financial modelling, securing commercial contracts with turbines suppliers/operators, securing power purchase contracts and attracting debt finance for financial close are carried out regardless of the size of the project; if anything, in fact, the tasks involved in developing get easier with scale.
Constraints and Challenges
The key limiting constraint up to now has been lack of belief among policy makers in both local government and in the Scottish government that community energy can be done at scale. Even to this day, despite endless pro-community rhetoric, not a single MW of the 1,500MW of wind farms built on the Scottish government’s own land holdings (specifically, Forest and Land Scotland) is community owned. If the Scottish government is not willing to back community energy on its own huge estate, why should we expect private landowners to do so?
Replication and scaling
The Western Isles has community wind farms totalling 23MW spread distributed over 6 separate wind farms. It is obviously much more difficult to organise 6 different wind yield and environmental analyses, contract 6 different construction projects and conclude 6 different commercial financing contracts than it is to build just one 23MW wind farm in one location, yet people still look askance when a community says it would like to do just that. Change that attitude and there is no limit to what can be owned and operated by communities across Scotland. Orkney Council is already demonstrating that and there is no reason that cannot be replicated elsewhere, instead of repeating the tragedy of missed opportunities that we have had in Scotland over the past 20 years.
Working conditions and fair work practices
Featured organisations and initiatives were asked to supply the following information regarding working conditions:
- Alignment with Scottish Government Fair Work First criteria
- If they have gone beyond Fair Work First by incorporating broader values on fair work
- For larger organisations, whether a union recognition agreement is in place.
This did not apply to co-operatives structures and membership-based initiatives, though all projects and initiatives were given room to provide any detail on fair work practices deemed relevant.
The following information was provided:
Point and Sandwick Trust has an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy that applies to all employees, contractors, volunteers, stakeholders.
