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Rewiring the State

The transition to clean energy could be an opportunity to build a different model that would, to use the First Secretary of State’s own words, end

“overly centralised decision making and over-privatisation”.

Development thus far has simply concentrated power in the hands of the big corporates and left communities feeling left behind and disempowered. In Shetland, we host one of the largest onshore wind farms in the country, but we have the highest levels of fuel poverty, and last year the developer SSE was paid £9 million in constraint payments not to generate electricity—that is regulatory madness. In this rewired state, will the communities that host renewable energy developments have control and get direct financial benefit from them?