ScottishPower Renewables empowers communities to determine how community benefit funds they receive from its operational windfarms will best address local needs.

Our funds can be used to deliver a wide range of local initiatives to improve local facilities and services, to enable upskilling and education, to make energy efficiency improvements to community buildings and to deliver heritage and tourism initiatives, amongst many other things.

We also support several communities that choose to direct funds towards initiatives to help local people address rising energy costs through a Community Energy Fund. A Community Energy Fund operates by providing households in the local area a contribution towards their energy bills.

Feedback received from communities already delivering a Community Energy Fund includes:

‘It is hugely appreciated, especially in the month of December!’

‘This is a very useful scheme and I look forward to the fuel payment and appreciate it very much.’

‘The payment comes in very handy, especially now fuel and electricity prices are so high.’

‘This is a great benefit to people in the village, especially given the rising cost or energy.’

If your community is interested in using the community benefit funds that they receive from ScottishPower Renewables to reduce energy costs, we suggest considering the following parameters:

• The Community Energy Fund will be managed and administered by your organisation and will need to have the appropriate processes and measures in place to adhere to the reporting and due diligence obligations in your legal agreement.
• The value that you wish to contribute each year to your Community Energy Fund should be agreed in advance with ScottishPower Renewables to ensure that there is no personal gain or additional benefit to an individual or household. The available funding and number of households in your eligible area will also have to be considered when agreeing this value.
• Every household within the participating eligible area should be invited to provide evidence annually that their property is their primary residence, this may be in the form of a council tax bill or another formal document.
• The agreed amount of the annual Community Energy Fund should then be distributed to all eligible households.
• This should form one single payment, each year per household.
• Households do not have to own their property but tenants and landlords cannot both receive a payment for the same property.

The Community Energy Fund may be paid directly to the householder to offset energy costs rather than to their energy provider.