Chamber and committees

It will only be possible to say which communities will benefit once the developers have identified potential sites on the national forest estate. It is expected that this process will take up to eight month to complete.

Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) has responsibility for the development of the national forest estate and it would not have been appropriate to directly involve communities in the commercial process. However, FCS did discuss with representative community bodies such as Community Energy Scotland, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Scottish Community Woodlands and others during the process and endeavoured to obtain a good outcome for communities.

Yes, and the deals announced provide for Forestry Commission Scotland to become a joint venture partner in specific schemes should they chose to do so.

Communities are welcome to flag up their interest during the eight month period if they want to pursue a renewables project under the National Forest Land Scheme (NFLS) prior to the list of sites being finalised by the developer. Once that list is established communities will have another opportunity to take forward sites via the NFLS scheme for non allocated sites. They will be able to engage with the developers to avail of the negotiated Forestry Commission Scotland deal for a longer period after the exclusivity period prior to a planning application being made.

The project Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) undertook with Atkins Consultants had the main objective to build a GIS based analytical model to enable FCS to assess potential wind resource on the national forest estate. This objective was achieved and FCS routinely uses this to assess the potential of various forest blocks for different reasons. Atkins also ran the model as a part of the exercise and produced a report covering the NFE as part of the deliverables of the project. This, along with the analytical model was handed over to FCS in September 2008. Any report like this has its limitations and the main project output was the working model however, the report did provide the necessary confidence that there remained a reasonably significant wind energy resource on the NFE and that therefore it would be worth pursuing its development strategically. FCS has had no requests to release the report but would be happy to publish it on their website if required.

Depending on energy prices Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) anticipate total renewable energy derived income of about £30 million per year by 2020, this is based on FCS''s forecast that an additional 500MW of installed capacity should be achievable. This extra income will be reinvested and will therefore be a huge saving to the taxpayer.

A series of options were modelled ranging from the current leasing arrangement through joint ventures to Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) self development. Given FCS cannot borrow funding for such purposes the lease/joint version option was seen to be the best route to follow.

Forestry Commission Scotland has secured leading edge community benefits of up to £5,000 per mw per annum for both wind and hydro developments. Communities, if they so wish, will be able to invest this payment in a share of the development. Also, they have the choice to add extra cash of their own to build a greater stake for the community.

We estimate that this new programme could generate up to 500mw per annum and if this is realised then it could mean a windfall of £2.5 million per annum for communities.

Every exercise like this is heavy on resource and time. Progressing these opportunities will contribute significantly to the delivery of the Government''s renewable energy targets and generate an additional revenue stream for Forestry Commission Scotland which will avoid the need for taxpayers to support the cost of delivery of social and environmental outputs from the national forest estate.

Forestry Commission Scotland estimate having 2GW of capacity installed (wind and hydro, excluding large-scale pumped storage) on the national forest estate by 2020.