Argyll Renewables Communities (ARC) looks for gold at the end of a rainbow coalition

The community collaboration between Islay, Kintyre and Tiree that is Argyll Renewables Communities (ARC), is leading the way in an initiative to guide communities negotiating the social and economic impacts they will experience from local offshore wind farm developments.

ARC is a collaboration between the community-owned Islay Energy Trust, the Kintyre Energy Trust and the Tiree Community Development Trust.

The organisation was established to safeguard and enhance local community interests in the development and operation of the proposed Argyll offshore wind farms.

The offshore wind projects concerned

The Crown Estate has signed exclusivity agreements with Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) Renewables for projects off Kintyre (378 MW) and Islay (680MW); and with Scottish Power Renewables off Tiree (1,500MW).

These are extremely large scale projects, capable of generating over one quarter of Scotland’s peak electricity needs and involving total investment estimated at between £7 and 9 billion.

They will create potential opportunities for local businesses, job creation and investment in local services and infrastructure.  However, there will also be issues related to the sustainability and fabric of the respective local communities which will need to be anticipated, understood and sensitively debated.

Change management

These issues are complex, fascinating and, simultaneously. potential minefields and rainbows (a good metaphor for ARC).

Change is not necessarily retrogressive. It should be positive – but achieving a balance towards the positive requires intelligent change management. It cannot be left to chance and it cannot be busked.

There is a balance to be found and held between changes to the physical, social and economic fabric of affected communities -  steering these changes themselves towards the positive; and the concrete benefits to be negotiated in respect of the inevitability of these impacts.

The key issues for local communities are:

• to understand all of the potential impacts of the development and operational activities associated with these wind farms
• how to maximise positive benefits and minimise negative outcomes.

The ARC initiative

To these ends, ARC has been managing a series of Social and Economic Impact Assessments (SIA).

These SIAs will enable local communities to develop their own opinions from a position of knowledge; and allow them to participate on an informed basis in discussions with stakeholders, especially the developers, the consenting authorities – Argyll and Bute Council, the Scottish Government, and the Crown Estate.

The SIAs will also give local communities the confidence that their voice is being heard, that they are fully involved in the development process and that well-balanced judgments can be reached.

ARC has must announcedthat it has been succesful in securing the next phase of these impact assessments of the proposed Argyll offshore wind farms.

Its funding application to EU LEADER for £32,852, has been approved. This will be matched by contributions from ScottishPower Renewables, HIE, SNH and the RSPB.

The work on the impact assessments will be carried out by a team including representatives of the local communities, the consultants, SQW Consulting (authors of the ARC SIA Scoping Study) and Dr Jill Shankleman, a consultant sociologist with 25 years experience of social impact assessments.

The work will be completed in early 2011.

The Grail

It is ARC’s contention that genuine collaboration between communities, corporate interests and consenting authorities – its rainbow coalition – can lead to both enhanced value for the developers and optimisation of benefits to communities.

Pragmatically, this should also facilitate the passage through the statutory consenting process in a constructive manner.

Philip Maxwell, Chairman of the Islay Energy Trust, says: ‘We are delighted to have secured the necessary funding to take this important study forward – and are very grateful for all the support we have received from many sources.

‘This endorses our participative approach.

‘I look forward to a level of corporate-community cooperation which, along with the active support of the consenting authorities, will ensure long term social, economic and cultural sustainability for the local communities’.

There are multiple excitements about this work:

• it shows participatory democracy in Argyll at the head of the game, with communities coming together in common interest and joint commitment to invest time, energy and expertise in taking control of circumstances that will shape their future sustainability
• it shows equally that corporate social responsibility is real and not simply theoretical, a part of the way we come together to manage development collaboratively in the 21st century
• it links mainland, inner and outer Atlantic Island communities in concerted learning and action
• it is modelling this collaborative corporate-community teamwork to the significant advantage of communities that will shortly find themselves in the same position as Kintyre, Islay and Tiree – and will inherit the template.