Dr Jess Hogan is a project manager at Regen, where her research has focused on community energy and achieving a just transition. She’s passionate about finding avenues to more meaningfully engage and bring communities along with us on the transition to net zero.

In a recent podcast interview, we chatted about the ClimateXChange project ‘Leveraging local and community energy for a just transition in Scotland’, conducted by Jess’s colleagues from Regen. This blog post is a summary of that discussion.

Why was this research needed in the context of Scottish climate policy?

It’s important first to define what a just transition is. It is about ensuring that those already on the margins of society are not left behind or penalised, or better still, can actively participate and benefit from a clean energy system.

The study looked at evidence from Scotland and across the UK, and found that local and community energy, where communities own, operate and benefit from renewable energy projects, can contribute to all eight of Scotland’s National Just Transition Outcomes. These outcomes are essentially Scotland’s goals for making sure the move to clean energy doesn’t leave anyone behind and creates opportunities for communities and local people.

The Scottish Government recognises this potential, which is why they set a target of 2 gigawatts of local and community owned energy capacity by 2030. They’ve also invested in community energy projects through their Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES).

However, it is also important that the Scottish Government consider what they mean by ‘local and community energy’, because not all projects are equal. This report sets out some key dimensions that practitioners can use to see how fair a project is. For example, it helps ask key questions like who’s making the decisions, who gets involved and has a say, who pays and who benefits.

Could you give examples of local and community energy projects?

There are projects all across Scotland. The largest onshore wind community-owned project is on the Isle of Lewis, where the community owns three wind turbines. This provides a lot of benefits, including substantial financial return, which goes directly back to the community, and they can decide how to use that funding. For example, a lot of community energy organisations use that funding to tackle fuel poverty, to help individuals make changes on energy efficiency and fuel poverty.

Up in Huntley, they used funding from wind turbines to buy three buildings in their town centre. They’ve renovated those buildings into a community-owned bookstore, a travel hub and a village hall.

We see these benefits being translated from revenue into tangible community benefit.

Going back to the study, what were the main aims?

The Scottish Government’s Draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan emphasises the importance of local and community energy for supporting Scotland’s net zero and just transition ambitions. The aim of this study was to understand how those local and community projects can help deliver against these ambitions within Scotland’s devolved powers.

The study set out to understand three things: 1) what’s happening in local and community energy projects across Scotland; 2) what are the big opportunities and challenges that these projects face; 3) how can these projects help deliver the Scottish Government’s National Just Transition Outcomes.

The report provides practical recommendations to the Scottish Government about how to better support these kinds of local energy approaches as part of their wider energy strategy.

How was the research conducted?

This research used a three-part approach to understand how local and community energy can support Scotland’s just transition. First, the team conducted an extensive review of academic research, policy documents and case studies to identify what’s already working and where the gaps might be. Second, they interviewed 22 expert stakeholders across different sectors like community energy organisations, local councils, fuel poverty charities and people working in energy finance, making sure to prioritise community voices that don’t always get heard in these discussions.

What I think is the most valuable part of this is that they also brought together ordinary Scottish citizens, many from lower income areas as part of what they called a people’s panel. They wanted to get their perspective on how these projects could work better for everyone. What’s interesting is that only one participant had ever heard of community energy before joining.

This combination of methods meant that the recommendations were grounded both in expert knowledge and the lived experiences of people who would be most affected by these energy transitions. It’s really about putting people at the centre of energy planning.

What were the main findings from the project?

One of the main findings from this research is that community energy can deliver just transition outcomes across all eight of Scotland’s National Just Transition Outcomes, from empowering local communities to supporting wider equality and human rights.

To help ensure that these projects meet just transition outcomes, the report also establishes key dimensions for practitioners to evaluate their progress. For example, thinking about governance(who makes the decisions and how), participation engagement(who gets involved and has a say), and finance and funding(who pays and who benefits).

While we know that community energy can lead to more just practices, there are still significant barriers. The study found that there’s little awareness of community energy, what it is and how it works. Although when they learnt about it, people were very interested in learning more. Community energy can take a lot of time, money and resources, and communities don’t always have the capacity to participate, especially if they’re relying on volunteers.

Finance is a substantial barrier for community energy. While CARES has provided amazing support to communities, there is insufficient support to build capacity or compensate volunteers before a project is actually put in place.

There are some key ways that the Scottish Government could support this, which can be found in the report:

• For raising awareness, they could run a large-scale awareness-raising campaign about community energy across Scotland.
• For local capacity, they could support hiring skilled community development officers at a more local level, supporting those communities to take action.
• For finance, there’s a need for innovative financing to ensure both inclusivity and local benefit. While progress has been underway for this, supporting risk reduction in community investment models is really important for these projects to be successful.

ClimateXChange podcast

This is a summary version of our podcast episode 12: Evidence for climate policy in Scotland – CXC podcast

Project link

Leveraging local and community energy for a just transition in Scotland