Conversation Response

1. Benefits Desired from Nearby Renewable and Energy Storage Developments

Communities should be able to secure long-term, strategic, and locally determined benefits. The Working Paper highlights that community benefits can offer "transformative and long-lasting investment for decades to come" when shaped by local needs.

Key priorities include:

• Investment in local infrastructure such as transport, digital connectivity, and community facilities.
• Support for local skills, training, and apprenticeships in renewable and low‑carbon sectors.
• Measures that directly reduce fuel poverty through energy efficiency and home retrofit support.
• Support for community development organisations to enable sustainable delivery capacity.
• Legacy-driven capital projects that build long-term community resilience.

2. How the Good Practice Principles Should Encourage Meaningful and Lasting Benefits

The refreshed Principles should:

• Strengthen expectations for early and proactive engagement between developers and communities, enabling communities to help shape benefit packages.
• Explore opportunities to releasing community benefit funds early to provide initial seed funding to community development organisations.
• Ensure transparent governance through improved templates and guidance, addressing the consultation finding that existing guidance is too high-level.
• Promote partnership models that include local authority expertise, reflecting evidence that such partnerships have delivered strong outcomes in some regions.
• Encourage a broader mix of benefit types, including community ownership options.
• Emphasise legacy-focused, long-term benefits aligned to the lifespan of renewable assets.

3. Recommended Fund Levels Developers Should Provide

The Scottish Government proposes increasing the fund level for onshore wind from £5,000 to £6,000 per MW per year.  However, analysis of the Consumer Price Index and Retail Price Index would suggest that the historic £5,000 per MW figure is now worth over £8,000 per MW when adjusted for inflation.

Therefore, a minimum of £7,500 per MW index linked for the life of the development for onshore wind is therefore appropriate.

Additional considerations:

• Offshore wind should have a commensurate rate reflecting scale and broader impact.
• Battery storage should provide a significantly higher rate than the proposed £150/MW, recognising the limited socio-economic benefit and differing commercial models.
• Additional guidance is required for transmission infrastructure and community benefit to ensure that community benefit funds are linked to those most impacted by the developments.

4. Guidance and Support Needed for Communities

Communities require clear, accessible, and practical support to maximise benefits. The Working Paper identifies improved guidance and capacity building as essential.

Key needs include:

• Clear governance templates and model frameworks for fund management.
• Dedicated capacity-building support, including the proposed Community Benefit Peer Forum.
• Technical support for business planning, long-term financial management, and investment strategy.
• Guidance on collaborative models and co-located technologies to ensure communities are not disadvantaged by overlapping developments.
• Consideration to manadatory levels of community benefit funding where development levels significantly fall short of the exisiting level of £5,000/MW

Summary Statement

This refresh provides an opportunity to deliver clearer, stronger, and future‑fit guidance. Adjusting fund levels to reflect inflation, establishing proportionate expectations for offshore wind, and significantly increasing battery storage contributions will help ensure fairness. Strengthened governance, support mechanisms, and community planning tools will ensure communities can deliver long-term, locally-led benefits aligned to their ambitions.

To reflect the converstaions that the Council has been having with Communities which are helping to inform the development of an Aberdeenshire Community Benefit Strategy.