A BID to create the largest community-controlled wind farm in Scotland has been rejected.
Cowal Community Energy’s (CCE) bid was the first of its kind in Scotland where a community would take over a large-scale wind farm site on publicly-owned land and benefit from the full income from the turbines.
CCE brought four community development groups together to bid to takeover and renew the Cruach Mhor wind farm in Cowal, Argyll and Bute, which is currently owned by Forestry Land Scotland.
The bid was seen as a "test case" for communities across Scotland, but it was ultimately rejected by Forestry Land Scotland.
Supporters of the project have vowed to fight on and hope to overturn the decision.
Graeme Murray, a director on Cowal Community Energy, said: "FLS and the Scottish government are public bodies who emphasise their support for communities and repeatedly state how local areas should benefit from the surge in renewables. They emphasise community consultation and openness.
"In discussion with officials from FLS today they confirmed that, in writing their tender process, they did not even consider the possibility that a community bid would be received, and that the process was conceived on the assumption that only corporate developers would bid.
"This clearly confirms to me that the process was not constructed in such a manner that it would facilitate communities being able to bid on equal terms with corporate developers and so we will now be challenging that process."
Murray added: "We have detailed a plan to finance the project, we have made sure we have access to the necessary expertise to run this type of project, we represent around 80 percent of the people in Cowal, we are working within both the Government’s and the FLS’s stated policy to support communities to benefit from the renewables explosion.
"If our bid can be rejected, the idea that Scottish communities will benefit properly from renewables is for the birds. We just don’t think FLS thought it through."
Alan Stewart, a director on CCE said: "We’ve been told by Forestry and Land Scotland that they simply had not expected a community bid which is genuinely astonishing in the 21st Century and given the emphasis on community empowerment promoted by all our public bodies.
"This all shows that – despite the warm words – everything is still weighted to the well-resourced corporate developers with lots of available resources and established expertise. As things stand, the Community groups have no chance in the bidding process.’
As part of its efforts to overturn the FLS decision, CCE said it hopes to speak to Scottish Government ministers, as well as recruiting help from political representatives and organisations who support the Cruach Mhor initiative.
Stewart added: "We feel that the Scottish Government and FLS’s own guidance to support community involvement has been largely ignored.
"For example, the consultation process was non-existent. The local community only learnt that Cruach Mhor wind farm was up for tender when we stumbled across it by accident a couple of months before the deadline.’
Dr Josh Doble, policy manager at Community Land Scotland, said: "It is truly disappointing to learn that CCE’s bid for the Cruach Mhor wind farm was unsuccessful.
"This was a test case in which FLS and Scottish Government could have turned their warm words about community energy and community wealth building into real action.
"CCE’s ambitions are an inspiration to the community energy sector. Their plans could transform the local economy of the Cowal Peninsula whilst making a significant contribution to SG’s own community-owned energy targets.
"We will continue to support CCE to realise their plans and challenge the flaws in the tendering process."
David Leven, Forestry and Land Scotland Director of Commercial Development, said: “As an agency of the Scottish Government, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) is working to promote the low carbon energy transition in a way that delivers best value to the taxpayer and alignment with Government policy on community benefits.
“The recent tender exercise to repower Cruach Mhor wind farm received lots of market interest, including from Cowal Community Energy (CCE), and was designed to ensure that communities were considered as a key part of the overall evaluation.
“FLS has met with CCE to explain why its bid was not the preferred one and is keen to maintain a positive dialogue to explore how the local community could potentially benefit from part community ownership in addition to community benefit payments. This is a key objective for FLS, and we look forward to working with CCE and other stakeholders as the project progresses.”
