Community Energy Transition Co.
Welcome to the future of community benefits…
The biggest topic discussed by your community was about understanding the opportunity to help local households directly.
We have worked with experts at Natural Power to devise a series of route-maps to directly help the 6,500 households near the Bodinglee site with household bills while also reducing their carbon footprint.
What have we learned?
- Funding energy efficiency measures – ranging from insulation to new heat sources (like heat pumps and solar panels) – will give more back to community members through energy bill savings than the community benefit payments themselves.
- The average annual benefit payment from Bodinglee will be around £1.33M and the reports show more than one scenario where energy bill savings could be double this amount annually.
- These measures could also stop tens of thousands of tonnes of CO2 entering the atmosphere every year, helping local people to tackle climate change as well as save money.
- Not only could this provide long term household bill savings and reduce household carbon footprints, but it could also provide opportunities for skills development and provide additional jobs in the local area.
What are we proposing?
- A new community body whose purpose will be to help local people have affordable, clean energy and a warmer home.
- A service to local residents to assess the energy efficiency of their home, organise installers and fund measures to help them achieve improvements.
- Once assessments have been carried out, the community body will bridge the gap between government funding and pay for improvements to homes on behalf of residents with the funds generated by the wind farm.
Funded by the wind farm, run by the community…
- We will work with local communities to establish an organisation with a panel which can agree how the body will invest the benefit funds to deliver to these goals.
- Our current proposed name for this organisation is the Clydesdale Community Energy Transition Co. Further consultation with your community may result in another name being chosen.
- We propose that the organisation will be funded by the community benefit payments from Bodinglee Wind Farm (around £53 million).
- We will gift a 1% share of the wind farm to the community body and offer a further 9% at market value. If the community does not wish to take up the ownership offer, then an enhanced benefit payment offer (above the £5,000 per MW) will be made to help fund the organisation to ensure its success.
We acknowledge that establishing this body requires a commitment from “you” to make this a reality, but could create wide benefits for the community.
Creating Clydesdale Community Energy Transition Co.
The organisation will be able to:
- Set its own agenda to achieve its purpose with the community agreeing on how the community benefit funds can be invested.
- React to other needs defined by the community – if they see fit – such as direct payment to bills if the circumstances warrant.
- Act as a panel to advise on grants.
We will help set-up the organisation and enable it to hire its first development manager, funds will be made available for this from the community benefit fund.
The structure…
- The governance structure will place the local community as decision makers, with support from professional positions funded by the community benefit.
- Advisory positions for South Lanarkshire Council, local councillors, Banks Renewables, local businesses and experts in the area such as the Energy Saving Trust and Local Energy Scotland.
Because the organisation will agree on priorities with a panel of local community councils, you will be able to have your say on how it is run. We believe that the ownership offer together with community-led governance will provide a long-term positive impact for the region.
What will this deliver for your community?
Warmer, more efficient homes: Lower energy bills
We estimate reductions in annual energy costs by £2.5-4.5M for households with over 100,000 tonnes of CO2 being prevented from entering the atmosphere by reducing consumption of energy and replacing the energy sources where appropriate.
Local jobs and successful businesses
The CCETco will help local businesses get the skills they need. A core goal will be to help local businesses become leaders in the field of heat and low-carbon buildings. We expect between 200-400 locally-based full time job years could come from this investment within the region.
Key benefits
Proposed Pilot Project
Test, Learn And Build Skills
We propose starting with a pilot project funded by the Bodinglee Wind Farm, aimed at a community building to use as a test case to learn about the challenges of improving the historic buildings in the area. The study has identified both a higher-than-average number of older properties with poor heat performance, as well as a high number of households in fuel poverty. £200K has been earmarked for this project if Bodinglee is granted consent.
Green Community Jobs
The Natural Power report has identified that through local contracting to deploy the measures around 200 full-time job-years can be created locally. This will nearly double the expected jobs created in South Lanarkshire as a result of the development of the wind farm itself. These will be in a sector that is of primary importance – not just now, but for the next few decades – given the demand for the installation of thermal efficiency measures and new heat sources such as heat pumps and solar panels as society moves to net-zero in an affordable way.