Renewable energy sparks new opportunities

THE government's new system for subsidising renewable energy – to be introduced in April – should provide a major boost for dairy farmers and other landowners who currently face high electricity bills.

That was the view this week of Robin Priestley, of Brodies LLP at its conference on how to harness renewable energy.

The new Feed-In Tariffs (FITs) provide advantages in that they pay for all the electricity generated, as well as surplus power sold to the grid.

The scheme is targeted at small-scale operations up to a limit of five megawatts, and this puts it, according to Priestley, in the range that many farmers could benefit from.

The changing public attitude to renewable energy and climate change is also helping encourage more landowners to look at the opportunity provided by renewable schemes, either through wind power or hydro, according to Alex Buchan, also of Brodie's

"We are increasingly busy with smaller-scale schemes, which are still quite complex in that they require legal expertise in property, planning, taxation and other matters," he said.

" Dealing correctly with these aspects can be critical to the success or otherwise of any project. However, it is noticeable that the public acceptability of renewable energy and its benefit to the country is more apparent."

The increased use of planning conditions, or Section 75 agreements, might also induce communities to support applications, as they can also reap some of the benefit of renewable energy through this condition.

Buchan advised anyone thinking of pursuing the development of a project for either wind or water power to seek advice from people or organisations with a positive track record in this relatively new technology.

The Scottish Government has a renewable energy target of 31 per cent of energy coming from renewable sources by 2011 and while that target now seems achievable, the bar is being raised to 50 per cent by 2020.

One major problem in hitting those targets, however, is that connection to the National Grid is not as straightforward as it could be. There is sufficient capacity in the Central Belt of Scotland, but in the north where there are big plans for expansion of wind farms, the infrastructure is often not up to requirements.

Historically, planning has been a major hurdle for such projects, but the new laws should help reduce the height of that hurdle, says Priestley, but he conceded there would be flashpoints between developers and residents.

By Andrew Arbuckle