The Power Shift is a major new collaborative journalism project from the Scottish Beacon which will be investigating how Scotland’s green energy transition is reshaping land, communities, and power dynamics across the country.
The subject of the green transition has been politicised, and even weaponised. Too often this means that coverage of this topic has been portrayed as black and white. We want to stay in the realms of the grey, embracing complexity and covering nuance. We will explore what’s working as well as what’s not, and what communities can learn from one another. We will also cover how the renewable energy revolution can be driven by local communities themselves.
This is a process that is happening now – and at scale. It’s a process that has huge potential but has also sparked debates around ownership and local democracy. The renewables revolution is an essential part of the fight against climate catastrophe and has the potential to bring jobs, and clean affordable energy to communities across Scotland. But the revolution also throws up big questions:
Who benefits from huge infrastructure projects? What’s in it for local people? Who gets to decide how a community benefits? How does the renewables boom interplay with issues of land-ownership, crofting and often fragile ecosystems? How can we protect common land and precious environmental assets? When will our energy bills come down? What would constitute real benefits for affected communities? Could community shared ownership be the answer? And how will this affect community owned energy projects?
Ultimately, the question is: what is energy for?
Communities face huge, private, foreign-owned companies that are often remote and unresponsive. Shetland already hosts the SSE Renewables owned Viking Energy wind farm, at 443MW one of the UK’s largest onshore wind farms. Yet the islands have one of the highest fuel poverty rates in the country, meaning that to heat their homes people generally spend twice as much as the UK average. The same pattern can be found in communities across the country.
This topic has also the subject of ongoing consultation by the Scottish Government – who have been seeking “ ways to improve how communities will receive additional benefits from renewable energy developments”. The UK Government has recently set out a white paper “seeking views on potential mandatory community benefits for low carbon energy infrastructure, and shared ownership schemes”.
Map showing locations of Power Shift partners
The Power Shift is an innovative collaboration between independently owned, community-based newspapers and magazines to tell the story from the ground up. Our partners on this project span the length of Scotland from the Outer Hebrides to Galloway. They cover urban, rural and island populations. They include: Kyle Chronicle; Shetland News; Bylines Scotland; Glenkens Gazette; Forres Local; Am Paipear; The Bellman, Greater Govanhill, Fios; and Lochside Press.
The picture across Scotland is mixed, with some communities already in receipt of huge resource from community renewables, while others are suffering at the behest of a planning system which seems opaque at best. By working together, we are able to notice patterns across different locations to create national stories about how the bigger picture is playing out across Scotland.
One of the challenges facing communities is how to organise to reap the benefit of a renewables revolution that we are not in control of. How do you create a democratic forum within small rural communities that can come to decisions about appropriate use and also redistribute income and community benefits with transparency and impact?
Read more: Study finds community energy generates 100x more wealth than corporate counterparts
Over the next six months we’ll be working collaboratively on an investigation about the positive and negative impacts of Scotland’s next energy boom – in a process of cross-community learning and knowledge sharing. We’ll also be releasing an accompanying podcast. Together, we’ll be investigating best (and worst) practice as well as building a network of experts to feed-in to this national conversation about how the Power Shift can bring maximum benefit to Scotland’s communities.
We also want to hear from you. How has the green transition played a part in your community? Please take a moment to share your stories via the survey link below.
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This project has been made possible with support from the Tenacious Journalism Awards
