I believe that the earmarking of a modest sum of money for feasibility/planning costs for community schemes that are in their gestation stages, perhaps through the Clear Skies mechanism, could ensure that several flagship schemes could be organised in the 2 to 6 MW range of size. Previously Clear Skies has been limited to very small projects, but there is a strong case that community participation through locally inspired and locally owned ethical investment projects could have a very positive effect on the planning environment for wind power in the UK. I believe it should be possible to administer such a drive effectively, by defining community schemes as ones where it was aimed that majority of equity would be owned by a large number of investors who reside in one particular county. The schemes could be organised by co-operatives limited by guarantee or by other community organisations.

Community share offers have an advantage under the Renewable Obligation since they can run on annual contracts from electricity suppliers, thus maximising returns from ROCs in a way that is usually not possible for conventional schemes. Conventional schemes have to rely on long term contracts from electricity suppliers to satisfy bankers. Indeed the forthcoming NFPA auctions of ROCs and other elements of renewable generation, will enhance these market opportunities for community share ownership. Locally inspired schemes have the potential to be low cost since they do not involve all of the overheads associated with conventional developers. They have the possibility of being established on lower wind speed sites because of the advantages of the way they are geared financially. Such schemes would clearly represent a valuable addition to renewable energy capacity.

However, there exists a large knowledge gap. A small number of activists and farmers such as Adam Twine in Oxfordshire, know about these possibilities, but while there is considerable general interest in the notion of community wind power schemes, knowledge about how to organise them is poor. Yet community wind power can only build up its potential if there is knowledge dissemination through real projects. A key aim of funding commercially sized community wind power projects should be to develop community knowledge about organising the projects.

Going on the basis of the existing examples, it may be that grants of the order of £40,000 per project may be sufficient to bring them through planning with windspeed monitoring. One million pounds worth of funding per year could generate 25 projects. If they all came to fruition, with an average capacity of 4 MW this would represent 100 MW of capacity per year. This would compare very favourably indeed with the grant support for Round 1 offshore wind power which, at 10 per cent of capital costs, has means a ratio of roughly £10 million for every 100MW of offshore wind power capacity.