The community of Cove on the Rosneath peninsula in Lomond was facing a situation of decline, with little affordable housing; no sheltered housing; a threat to close its school; no modern play area; few social or sporting facilities; few business opportunities; no services for tourists; and environmental degradation.
This is not a growth or even a survivable scenario.
In the financial climate after the Autumn of 2008, there was no point in hoping that any external agency would come along and give Cove a hand up.
So Cove decided to do it for itself. The plan was to build a community wind farm and to use the revenue from this to address the list of community deficits above, in the striving for sustainability.
In the process the Development Trust set out to learn from other communities that had copper fastened their own futures – and its case its net widely, not just around Lomond communities but going on study visits to a suburban city fringe community like Renton and to a rural one like Tyndrum.
Everywhere they went, they learned more and they learned differently – and ll the while they were learning about the wind farm industry, the technologies, the necessary infrastructure, the installations.
They needed to learn first to be able to write tight tender documents. This team, working for this community, starting from scratch, got to a point where public sector procurement staff could beneficially learn from them.
Murdo MacDonald, Convener of the Development Trust talks almost disbelievingly of the challenges the Trust’s team has faced and overcome, at the scale of the gap between the nothing they knew at the outset and the depth of the expertise they have worked hard to obtain by this stage.
He speaks with gratitude for the range of interest, help and advice offered to help them on their way – by Argyll and Bute Council’s planning officers, Community Energy Scotland, SNH, the Climate Challenge Fund, HIE, the Ministry of Defence and individual professionals in the various corners of the vast learning landscape they traversed.
Oh and they raised half a million pounds in two years.
What are they looking at?
Take a deep breath. This community will owe £15 million [£10 million for the turbines and £5 million for the civil engineering].
But it will own a windfarm – the hedge against the debt and the revenue generator of between £300,000 and £400,000 per annum that has the almost certain power to regenerate this able and courageous community on the shores of the mighty Clyde.
The location is not irrelevant. If you live in Cove you live on the water as much as anywhere. You sail.
If anyone knows that the wind is there and lives with the energy it generates under sail, it is Cove folk. They know how few days a year they can’t sail.
The plan
The planned wind farm – if it gets planning permission – will have five wind turbines, standing 92.5 metres high, each generating 2.3MW, a combined total of 11.5MW. There is a capable grid substation nearby at Whistlefield.
The turbines will be set below the skyline of the hills on the two adjacent farms hosting them, visible but ‘backclothed’ from the west below the ridge and hidden from the east because they don’t break the cover of the hilltop.
The farm will be wholly owned by the community’s Development Trust and all the revenue from it will go directly to projects for the community, addressing the missing pieces of its sustainable future outlined above.
The first 15 years will pay back the borrowing. The years from 16-20 will see annual income rise – falling back in years 21 to 25 when the government subsidy disappears.
Planning permission and the ballot
They have not yet got planning permission although they have kept the Argyll and Bute Council planning officers fully informed on what they have been doing all the way along. This will at least mean that they are not springing any unwelcome surprises on the planners. The future will depend on what decision the planners come to.
To help with the application for planning permission, the Trust hopes to demonstrate the strength of local support for the initiative, through a ballot, aiming to repeat the staggering 92% positive result of a ballot they held earlier in the project. Information on this is available online here.
A record?
- The proposed Cove Community Wind Farm – at 11.5MW capacity – will be the biggest of its kind in the UK, if it is consented.
- A 9MW farm is planned for the Isle of Lewis and, closer to completion, may well go operational earlier
- The biggest community wind farm currently in operation is the 6.5MW one at Westmill farm in Oxfordshire.
The public meeting
As this proposal enters its final stages, Cove Development Trust is holding a public meeting in Cove Burgh Hall on the Rosneath peninsula on Saturday 20th October, between 13.00 and 17.00, with a briefing at 15.00.
And the inspiration
There are few communities with the stomach for an initiative of this scale or with the ability and the will to do the ceaseless punishing work om research, record keeping, fund raising, grant applications and procedural management required to see it to a successful conclusion.
Communities that can do this are self-selecting because they just go and do it.
Other communities without the great good fortune to have access to local individuals who can form a team like the one at Cove can learn from them in ambition, in persistence and by seeking advice from them. They are enormously glad of the help other community teams have given them and will undoubtedly want to recognise that by doing the same.
It is probably just worth pointing out that although the Wind Farm is called the Cove Community Wind Farm the actual CDT, and the projects it will be looking to further, covers the whole West side of the Rosneath Peninsula including the villages of Cove, Kilcreggan, Peaton, Ardpeaton and Portkil.
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It’s also worth pointing out that the RPWCDT website has an entire development plan on it, not just the opinion survey data and the windfarm; it’s a comprehensive document, and if even a tenth of it comes to fruition the peninsula will be an even more fantastic place to live than it is already.
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Built on an unsustainable income?
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Philosophically yes, but pragmatically if the government’s daft green agenda is intent on filling the pockets of windmill owners with greengeld I’m voting to have some of it end up in my community. Hopefully commensurate funding can be found for local microhydro also.
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Just to provide some assurance over the sustainability of the income over the entire lifecycle (25 years) of the wind farm. The Trust has carried out detailed financial planning to confirm that there would be sustainable income, and have applied sensible prudence to any projections so as to err on the side of caution.
As stated in the article we are seeking substantial financial backing (well a loan) and are in discussions with relevant financial institutions. We would not have progressed these discussions to the stage we have if these institutions didn’t share our belief that the income is sustainable.
It is also worth highlighting that the government bodies who have funded us to date also seek comfort that they are investing in a project which will deliver sustainable benefits and, touch wood, we have provided them the necessary assurances to date.
I would urge anyone who is keen to know more (and is able to attend) to come to the public meeting at Cove Burgh Hall this Saturday. The formal briefing is from 3pm till 4pm however there will be Trust director’s on hand to answer questions from 1pm onwards and we will have the various photomontages on show throughout the afternoon.
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Turbine visualisations:-
http://www.windfarms.me.uk/wind10.html
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Not sure if you are making a specific accusation at our project Malcolm. If so then I can only suggest you try and make it to the public meeting on Saturday to judge our proposal.
There will be photomontages on show and a presentation with the photomontages on it. Also to be clear these are all taken from locations which we have been told to take them from by various bodies. (i.e. we didn’t decide where to take them from to try and reduce the visual impact which I appreciate some people might suspect)
The Board’s opinion is that they are not obtrusive from a visual impact perspective and that is the feedback we have received so far. Our land visual impact assessment has also been subject to two independent audits and both, in addition to the original one, came to the same conclusion that visual impact was not a material concern.
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This has gone out to all 50 communities in Scotland fighting wind farm planning applications – so don’t take it personally. However you could perhaps explain how your visualisations were done and post them on a website for all to see. It very much depends on what you or others produced that decided that ‘visual impact was not a material concern’ because that in itself has to be questionable on a narrow peninsula like Rosneath.
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Malcolm,
We have a series of meetings over the next fortnight (with a few more still to be set up) with local representative groups and also public meetings and the phototmontages will be presented at the meetings.
After that I doubt there will be any issue with publishing the photomontages on the Trust’s website although I will just need to check regarding rules and regulations.
For those not aware there are strict rules about photomontages in terms of how they are presented. They are provided in a set ratio and we are not allowed to change the ratio or crop the pictures in any way (even if the intention is to make it easier to show where the wind farm is on the picture). They are photographed and presented in such a manner that you are supposed to hold them 35 cm from your face to allow you to visualise exactly how the turbines will look within the landscape. The landscape example in the article is the size and shape of all of them.
As stated before they are available at the public meeting so there is no issue with them being withheld. The proposed design of the Cove Wind Farm has given consideration (as is proper) to the visual impact and a conscious decision was taken to bring the turbines further down the hill in order to provide a greater backdrop to them and reduce the visual impact. It makes more sense to have them higher up the hill as they would generate more power there that would have increased the visual impact.
I appreciate, understand and in some cases entirely sympathise with, concerns regarding the visual impact of wind farms.
My personal opinion is that the Cove one is not obtrusive and I would ask people to judge it individually rather than be influenced by any leaflet distributed to anti wind farm groups.
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Oh dear . . . this is not going to make Malcolm happy
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Well done the people of Cove, Kilcreggan, Peaton, Ardpeaton and Portkil. And before any anti-wind farm people come on bleating – the rules about wind farmns are not their rules. If it was their rules it might be different – but what Cove, Kilcreggan, Peaton, Ardpeaton and Portkil are choosing to do is take advantage (for community rather than private benefit) of the rules that are in place.
Self-help – you’ve just gotta luv it
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Well done and wishing you all the best for this great project. It is a shame however that the only community on the Rosneath peninsula who appear will not benefit from this, is Rosneath itself.
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and Clynder too
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The Rosneath Peninsula West Trust Board has actually been concerned to consider how to share the benefits of Cove Wind Farm income, and is at the point of meeting with representative bodies in neighbouring communities to talk about its external community benefit policy and the overall development. If we can deliver this project, we believe that the whole peninsula will benefit.
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This raises an interesting question about spreading the benefits from wind farm income generation. If this was a commercial wind farm in the Highlands, there would be a settlement that would see a good chunk of money going to the immediate community, a lesser amount going to the wider local community and lastly an amount for communities throughout the Highlands. However, in this case, because the farm is a community venture then presumably all of the income is going to the owning community? In the case of small installations of one or two turbines and where the income is modest then this seems fair enough but perhaps larger community owned farms should also make contributions to the wider community along the lines that a commercial farm would make?
In any case, good luck with this project. Yet again, I agree with “Simon”. (This is becoming monotonous).
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Hi Dougie,
This is exactly what Andrew is getting at. The Trust is very aware of the requirement placed on commercial wind farms to contribute to the community and the different expectations set by different authorities (and we have researched these). However, relatively speaking, it is still a very small percentage of the overall profit. What is worth emphasising again is that 100% of the profit from our wind farm will be invested in community projects so in essence we will have already met these requirements and more besides.
Andrew’s reference to an external benefit policy is a Trust decision to extend the benefits to communities outwith the owning community and this is the focus of the meetings with various representative bodies that Andrew has referred to.
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Thanks for the clarification Laurence. I’ll be watching progress with interest.
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Global warming update think the SNP are telling porkies to take your money http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHbJnTZWrDA
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Oh dear Keith.
I am afraid it is the Daily Mail that has been telling porkies. That very misleading article has been comprehensively rebutted by the Met Office.
Are you another climate change denier coming out of the woodwork? And what exactly does this have to do with the SNP?
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oops sorry scots Renewables: i just don’t buy into your religion I have no problem with you falling head over heels in love with the alarmisim about the end of the world, But get your hands out of my pockets to pay for your type of fairy tail
the SNP/EU part have an agenda of lowering emmisions and as such are forcing this farce on to the scottish people, if renewable are so good then let them fund themselves or have private investment Not my money
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Keith, I’m deeply sorry that in spite of what was no doubt a decent enough education you are still unable to tell the difference between science and religion.
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SR: yeah a state agenda eductation! tell me if you think there is a differance between science and religion what is it? next you will be telling me there is a difference between labour and tory or chatholic protestant. are they not all the same man created entities made to control other men/women
Climate change is natural yet our masters want us to pay for it Pay for the air you breath
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Keep taking the pills Keith.
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Great to see this project developing and good luck to those involved. Hopefully this can be the model on which an increasing proportion of wind farm development takes place, so that the wider societal benefits of reduced carbon emissions and greater long term energy price stability are translated into local benefit for the host communities.
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Disappointing to see so many uneducated arguments against this project before full details are actually known about it.
The bottom line is whether you are for or against wind power, the only projects of this scale that are currently being built are being built by developers for developers share holders. Many of our big power companies are predominately foreign owned so the government subsidies currently available are going to rich foreign institutions and investors. What can be said about this project is the fact that EVERY single penny in profit that is raised will be going to communities IN Argyll to improve rural communities and improve facilities for the people that live there in order that these communities can be sustained. Now if that’s not a good thing then I’m a Scottish Power shareholder!
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In a way, Paul, this is not about whether or not people are for or against wind power – because no one sensible can be against wind power in moderation and with discrimination.
This project is a modest but confident and capable installation, sensitively sited in every way, positively contributing to renewable energy generation and powerfully supporting communities in the entire Rosneath peninsula. It is where wind is and it is not in a wilderness area.
The problem with wind – and what has driven embedded – and reasonable – opposition is the unbuttoned scale of wind implementation in Scotland where a theoretical ability to supply Scotland’s entire needs from renewables in short order has been hard wired to a political agenda.
It is unintelligent to future proof on this scale with a technology that is itself the first in line for obsolescence – at this environmental and financial expense, at this cost to energy prices and with a grid that is unable to cope with current installations running at capacity in high winds.
The folly of this and the costs of it have produced an opposition that has become as blind to the gradations of wind use as is the Scottish Government at the other end of the scale. Such opposition IS unarguably irritating in instances like this but is has been created by brute excess driven by interests beyond energy provision – and that is the core irresponsibility.
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and the bottom line is that all households, with electricity bills across the UK, are paying for it whether they are in fuel poverty or not.
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Good on the enthusiasm of the team that thought this one up. All communities have people who are just naturally full of energy and, especially with retiral, are happy to put in time to benefit their locality. Most however have to approach the normal suppliers of funds,ie Councils, Governments, etc where money supplied by the Tax Payer is made available for recognisable special projects, and of course the Lottery Fund where the money is given by the public voluntarily.
Having looked up the Rosneath Peninsula website I find their description of the area to include expressions like ‘quiet, peaceful and very relaxing’ ‘most appropriate as the visitor escapes from the hustle and bustle of modern life’ ‘secluded little communities,amidst natural beauty with a character all of their own’ Sounds to me as if you need a few pounds in the Bank to live there. No doubt house prices match the surrounds. Sounds absolutely idyllic.
So why install an Industrial Wind Farm.
Does £1.133 million pounds public subsidy per annum, plus potentially the same again, £1.133 million pounds per annum from the sale of the electricity, sound like a good reason ?
The subsidy will be paying off the loans giving an overall profit in the region of 30% over the 20 years ie £6/7 million. The sale of the electricity will be 25 years x £1.133 million.
What makes this quiet,idyllic,wealthy rural area of Scotland deserve, never mind need,this horrendous amount of money ?
Why should a pensioner in Bournemouth or a crofter in Shetland have to pay for this extravagansa every time they switch on a light or boil a kettle. Why ? Because they are given no choice.
There are 5.5 million people in fuel poverty in the UK already, adding to their bills for something like this is obscene.
No doubt Napoleon will quote some severely under estimated cost increase to the average household’s bills,but will conveniently forget that Industry and Commerce have to suffer these increases as well, and therefore prices go up all round.
For a worthwhile power supply and a huge creator of employment please read this – from the BBC website this morning. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19984592
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Malcolm,
House prices on the Peninsula are not sky high. The villages are in constant decline and have been so for many years. The community hall was closed by the Council and taken over by the Community who now run it successfully. The library was closed by the Council and taken over by the Community who now run it. The kids play areas are derelict. The football pitch is overgrown. Public transport is limited. The foreshore is infested with knotweed. The geography of the area means it gets limited, or no passing trade and not long ago the Council tried to close the local school.
This is an area that without considerable community efforts to date would already be struggling to be sustainable however that effort cannot be assured forevermore.
It may also surprise you to know that a lot of people on the Peninsula are in fuel poverty.
I would also point out that the Board is not all retired people (in fact the overwhelming majority are not) and also point out that just because someone is retired doesn’t necessarily mean they are happy to invest their time (and considerable amounts of it) in benefiting the local community. We have also received monies from the government (through various grant funds) and the Lottery Fund.
It would be more useful if you found out a little about the area, and the people involved, before making the sort of assumptions you have in this post.
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Public transport is limited.
And evidence suggests, namely the ongoing ferry debacle, SPT would like to limit it further!
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It will be interesting to see, if the project comes to fruition, whether there is a negative effect on property prices.
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More likely a positive effect I would have thought Lowry – if the project provides a community income/fund which can be used to improve local facilities and quality of life, and perhaps to support e.g. startup enterprises.
Assuming you view rising property prices as ‘positive’ of course…
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I’m sure everyone is becoming bored with me relentlessly showing you time, after time that your figures are either wrong or deliberately misleading (and often both) so I’m not going to bother save for pointing out (again) that fuel poverty is being driven upwards by a pincer movement of declining household incomes and rising wholesale prices of gas. Everythging else (including fuel poverty abatement measurements by the energy companies) is having only marginal effects on energy prices (as you well know).
However, I am intrigued as to why you keep calling me “Napoleon”. Funnily enough that was one of my nicknames at school (along with Professor Hairy back) – though a product of my interest in military history rather than for anything else. Please feel free to continue using it if it gives you pleasure. Personally I preferred it when you called me “God” as it gave everyone much mirth.
A final note: haven’t the crofters in Shetland got their own wind farms and aren’t the pensioners in Bournemouth benefiting from their FITS from their solar PV installations?
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More SNP nonsense
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Indeed. The Bournenmouth branch of the SNP are doing particularly well at the moment.
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You misconstrued my first sentence.
I suggest you visit the Craignish Peninsula to find out what can be done by enthusiastic creative people to develop a thriving and resourceful community.
My second sentence says it all. If these sources can’t help you out then you have no case, or you are failing to put it over properly.
Libraries close – we are all on ipads and kindles now.The kid’s play area is presumably derelict because there are no kids – same with the football pitch ( why can’t somebody run a sit n’ride over it to at least improve its appearance). Will money buy in 11 lads to make a football team ?
Pull out the knotweed – a few weekends with enough people should see it all done.
I fail to see how millions of pounds of our money – given unwillingly – will make any difference other than to falsely support unviable schemes for a temporary future. In fact, to be quite honest, you don’t seem to have too many problems in the first place.
As you point out the area is not readily accessible – I’m afraid that says it all really.
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Fair enough Malcolm,
There seems little point debating the needs, or otherwise, of a community which you obviously don’t know anything about other than to see a brief description of it and assume we are all rich.
You are obviously opposed to wind farms full stop rather than specifically to this one above any other and are perfectly entitled to that view. This particular thread is about the specific wind farm we are proposing rather than general arguments and I am more than prepared to answer specific queries about it. More general arguments about wind farms probably belong in a different thread.
Also if you think you can just pull up knot weed over a weekend you are sadly mistaken. If it were only that simple. May I suggest you do a little research into it and you might then understand why your idea is a non starter and why it is a blight on many villages which has caused headaches for years.
What I would say is that we plan to not only make our villages sustainable for the medium to long term but we also unashamedly intend to make them better, with a specific focus on the facilities we provide for the people who live here, the people who live near here and for anyone who wishes to visit the area. I make no apologies for that ambition.
Yes we could get a small grant to rebuild a play park for the 100 or so kids that live here (you are wrong about there being no kids). We might get £10k which would patch up what we have for a few years and then someone else would need to pursue a grant to patch it up again. We, as a Trust, would rather do a much better job to provide something that will provide our young children with something better, and more creative, and we would like to be able to control its upkeep and development for a far longer period than a few years.
We would also like to improve transportation links to get round our geographical restrictions, maybe provide access to petrol for local people. We are very interested in getting involved in projects around affordable and sheltered housing etc etc etc.
I also stress that, as can be seen in our Community Action Plan, that there is not a single project or area for development which we wish to further which hasn’t been identified by the local community. Any suggestion that it is a bunch of retired or rich folk just progressing something because they have spare time or want to make their village elite and inaccessible to anyone bar the wealthy is a million miles off the mark.
Projects on this scale, with that level of time commitment are hard to support through available grant funding. That was the very reason we, as a Trust, decided that the grant funding model was not the appropriate one for us.
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Close the libraries because everyone has iPads and Kindles?
What a sheltered life you must lead Malcolm.
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I’m all for community renewables if any profit goes back directly to the ajacent community…and if the power generated is first used locally.
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Laurence – I sincerely wish you and your community well. But I am totally against the political dogma that says wind farms/renewables are a necessity – they are not – we have sufficient power to keep us going day and night and always will have. The future is Gas / coal /nuclear.
SR – whose extreme views say that’ the world is going to end tomorrow because all the ice has melted in the Arctic ( which is not true) fails to mention that the ice in Antarctica is thicker than ever.
Napoleon will spout his socialist subsidised SNP beliefs until his dying day.
It’s all just ridiculous International Politics which don’t reflect reality for ever man ,woman and child on this planet at this time.
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Absolutely disgraceful how people can make presumptions about communities they know nothing about. The sad fact of the matter is that THIS community has a lot less services and ammenities than some of the worst inner city areas you will ever visit. Nearest supermarket? 25 miles. Nearest cinema? 36 miles. Nearest sports centre or swimming pool? 17 miles and if Argyll & bute council had got there way the nearest school would have been 10 miles away. This community has suffered from the “death by a thousand cuts” policy for way too long now and in response to that a group of highly enthused people have come up with a plan to transform our community using a natural resource that we have in abundance and by utilising government grants that are available to anyone whether they want to put up a solar panel, insulate thier house or build a wind farm. The difference here is that NO developer is going to get their hands on the money. It will all be going to put right what the local authority and national government SHOULD have been doing in the first place. You don’t like the system? then lobby your politions for change. As for me? well I will be trying to put right many wrongs within my community so as my children have the chance to continue to live in the place to where they were born and have the chance of an education, a place to live, employment and basic facilities that are a given in almost every other community you could mention. And I will make no apology for having this ambition!!
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Paul Munro says, “Absolutely disgraceful how people can make presumptions about communities they know nothing about. The sad fact of the matter is that THIS community has a lot less services and ammenities than some of the worst inner city areas you will ever visit. Nearest supermarket? 25 miles. Nearest cinema? 36 miles. Nearest sports centre or swimming pool? 17 miles “…
You obviously know nothing about your own community, the Co-Op supermarket is only 400 yards from the swimming pool/sports centre not 8 miles away. Also you use the word “nearest”. Wrong again, try jumping on a ferry and go to Gourock.
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Nice though the outdoor pool is, it’s only open 6 months of the year. There is the pool at Port Glasgow but by the time you get on a bus you might as well have gone to Helensburgh. The Co-op in Helensburgh is terrible, Tesco is half the size but better in some respects; I look forward to the opening of Waitrose(and the Sainsburys in Gourock). If SPT get their way we won’t have a ferry at all (at the moment it seems to be off almost as much as it’s on), so facilities on the Gourock side may become inaccessible.
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When oh when is our brave would-be independent government going to stop preening itself and get to grips with this sick joke of a ferry saga?
Or is the population of the peninsula so small that they really couldn’t give a damn?
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As much as I’m not a huge supporter of this wind farm boom (I think we’ll look back in 20years and ask why no-one stopped it when huge areas of the best parts of SCotland are covered in them), it’s is a different argument and one that should not be allowed to take this debate off track.
Speaking as an ‘outsider’, this seems to be about a community using what resources are available to benefit the area they live. If the subsidy ends tomorrow, then this part of the plan may fail, but there are plenty other plans that will most definetely improve life on the peninsula, and encourage people to want to live there.
I’ll be completely honest, I’m envious of this plan – it’s not the usual one-sided stuff you often get from communities where a few busy-bodies pass of their own views as that of the community (I’m not referring to Gourock per se btw!). Having studied the plans and from what I know of Kilcreggan, they are very plausible and I can see the relevance.
If only I lived in Kilcreggan or Cove – I’d be champing at the bit to get involved with something like this.
But I say again – I think a trick is being missed in getting a reliable ferry – or would assuming SPT want rid of it and plananing for that event expedite the process?
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Thanks for those comments Jamie. Much appreciated.
In our community action plan one of the potential projects is to encourage community transport provision and we state in the plan that ‘The Trust will work with the Community Council and local transport groups to make requests of the transport providers to alter the times to better suit the local peninsula residents.’
This however was drafted prior to the recent ferry issues and therefore we are dealing with a moving goalpost. As such our previous ‘potential project’ may not now be entirely the most called for requirement but hopefully we have demonstrated a commitment to working to better public transport provision.
If the community priority moves away from better timetabling and toward something more fundamental like trying to ensure ferry provision is maintained to an appropriate and ‘useful’ standard then the Trust will react to that accordingly.
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That went well; not unanimous or a whitewash, but it seemed to me a majority present were in favour, with a minority having more questions to be answered(answers which will be found by the CDT and made available online), and a further minority against. The result of the poll will be interesting.
I would like to congratulate the directors of the CDT on a job well done so far; hopefully it will reach fruition.
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Pingback: Argyll News: More detail about Rosneath Peninsula West Community Wind Farm | For Argyll
Poll results are in; 82% of votes polled are in favour, of a total of 617 cast.
Lochside Press; 82% vote Yes in windfarm vote
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