Proposals which could see a significant reduction in available subsidies for small scale renewable projects could render a number of community-owned schemes in the Scottish Highlands as “unviable”, it has been claimed.
The warning has been made by independent environmental consultants Atmos Consulting as a UK Government consultation on proposed changes to the system of feed-in tariffs closes today.
The UK Government is currently proposing to reduce the level of subsidy available for small scale renewable energy projects from next year.
The Scottish Government recently achieved its objective of having 500 Megawatts of community and locally owned renewable energy schemes up and running in Scotland more than four years ahead of the original target date of 2020.
However Atmos has argues community owned projects should be given special dispensation from the new subsidy regime.
The firm said the smaller companies will find it harder to generate the necessary funding to get off the ground – as well as generally taking longer to achieve planning consent.
Atmos Consulting, Highlands regional director Dr Greg Fullarton, said:“The Highlands has fantastic under-utilised natural resources and in the right place their deployment for energy can cause minimal environmental impact.
“Community led schemes create economic resilience and support the creation of long term, self-sustaining and prosperous local economies and are especially important to fragile rural economies in the North of Scotland.
“Existing incentives under feed in tariffs have made community energy projects more attractive to lenders and we’ve seen steady growth in the number of community owned schemes as a consequence in recent years. But that looks set to end from the beginning of 2016.
“Our concern is that this places the Scottish Government’s ambitions to continue to grow the number of local and community-owned renewable energy projects at real risk.
“Our own analysis suggests that a large number of community projects we have worked on previously would not have been financially viable under the new 2016 feed-in tariff rates.
“The current DECC consultation states the aim of the current review is to make the scheme simpler with bandings recognising differences in capital or operational expenditure and yet the proposals do not take into account the distinct differences community led projects face. “
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