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Meeting of the Parliament 18 June 2013

18 Jun 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Hydro Power

Baker, Claire Lab Mid Scotland and Fife Watch on SPTV

Those are welcome comments from the minister.

When I speak to people in the sector, the feeling seems to be that there is quite a gap between a community that would like to be involved in a project and the end point of it being involved, which requires a certain level of expertise, including business expertise. There seems to be a need for more consultancy support and capacity building to get communities to that level.

A small hydro scheme could generate power to 150 homes—it could revolutionise energy consumption. It has many benefits, such as helping the country to get back on track in meeting our climate change targets, providing green jobs and playing its part in tackling fuel poverty.

Through companies working together with the community or—as the minister said—through communities taking forward their own projects, smaller-scale energy schemes can benefit a local area and the country at large. That has happened in certain cases, particularly in Scandinavia, and that could be explored and developed further as we continue to try to meet our future renewable energy targets.

As we look to the future, the development of hydro power in Scotland faces challenges. Others have highlighted the range of issues that Scottish Renewables raised in its briefing, but I will highlight the concerns about the SEPA 100kW checklist. I have been contacted by a constituent who runs a business installing micro-hydro power stations. Of course we must protect Scotland’s environment—SEPA has a crucial role to play in that and its efforts need to be recognised and supported. However, the application of the 100kW rule seems to be unnecessarily limiting the development of micro-hydro and community schemes, and there is a need to move to more proportionate but robust controls on development that consider each proposal’s merits.

My constituent’s points were that hydro schemes with a capacity that is greater than 100kW typically cost more than £500,000 to build and so are often out of the reach of small farmers, crofters, householders and many communities and that virtually all the rivers and burns that run close to populated areas have the potential for sub-100kW schemes, but SEPA’s implementation of the ministerial statement rules out viable development of those resources. However, sub-100kW schemes are more likely to use local trades in their construction, to be locally or community owned and to use British-manufactured machinery. I am happy to write to the minister with further details on those issues, but it would be good to hear his initial views this afternoon.

The debate has been an excellent opportunity to reflect on Scotland’s progress on hydro power and to address some of the future challenges. Hydro was revolutionary in the 20th century and we must now ensure that it can play its part in the 21st century.

15:19

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Meeting of the Parliament 18 June 2013

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