Community and locally owned renewable energy in Scotland at June 2019

Background

In 2011, Energy Saving Trust was asked by the Scottish Government to produce a database of all community and locally owned renewable energy installations in Scotland and to produce a short report on the information it contained. The objective of this work was to monitor progress towards the target set by the Scottish Government of 500 MW of community and locally owned renewable energy capacity operating in Scotland by 2020.1 This target was exceeded in 2015 and subsequently the Scottish Government increased their target to 1 GW of community and locally owned renewable energy capacity by 2020, and 2 GW by 2030.

This database has been updated annually since 2011 and this is the eighth iteration of its associated report. The database includes, as far as possible, all installations known to be operating, under construction, or in earlier stages of development as of June 2019. Since 2016, and as storage technologies have become more common, the report has also included findings on the capacity and type of community and locally owned energy storage systems.

Summary of key findings

The findings from this work are that at the end of June 2019:

• an estimated 731 MW5 of community and locally owned renewable energy capacity was operational in Scotland
• this is a 5% increase on the operational capacity reported at June 2018 when the operating capacity was estimated at 697 MW
• the Scottish Government has targets of 1 GW of community and locally owned energy by 2020 and 2 GW by 2030. The estimated operating capacity of 731 MW was 73% of the 2020 target and 37% of the 2030 target
• the operating capacity resulted from approximately 20,560 individual renewable energy installations6
• this is a 9% increase in the number of installations compared to June 2018