Lesley Riddoch: Green power can give the jolt our economy needs

CONGRATULATIONS to the people of Watten, a small Caithness village famous for a large loch and a tearoom which once charged my mum for sugar lumps during the Second World War.

Having just won a projected annual income of almost quarter of a million pounds – the local share of a 30-turbine wind farm (after repayment of set-up costs) – Wattenites need never skimp on the sugar lumps again.

While Highland Council tackles the grim task of saving millions from this year's budget, the Caithness villagers must decide how to spend a million pounds over a decade on local regeneration.

Their joint venture with private wind farm developers allows Watten to join an impressive roll-call of more than 500 Scottish communities with an annual income from renewable energy – the unsung and truly radical face of the renewables' revolution.

The model may vary between co-operative, community or joint venture control, but the result is the same. Local confidence grows as development trusts attract practical, resourceful people who exploit the wind to engage an even more potent renewable energy source: themselves.

Community controlled wind, wave, tidal, hydro, solar and biogas have the potential to transform the communities they touch and could mend "Broken Britain" faster and more effectively than anything Messrs Cameron and Clegg can concoct.

I'll grant you that notion does seem to fly in the face of the prevailing wind.

For almost a decade, letters columns have been dominated by an arid debate about the appearance and efficiency of wind turbines with communities becoming active only to oppose wind farm developments.

Now that the enormous potential of ocean energy has been vouched for by a government committee, the wary and pessimistic have started gunning for tidal and wave energy too.

Detractors seem to fear that Scotland will be surrounded by a massively expensive ring of steel as one almighty Pelamis wave convertor snakes its coils around our green and pleasant coastline. This is a misunderstanding of how technology and energy markets operate.

There will be a lot of steel and aluminium in our seas soon as developers test different designs to establish the most robust, efficient, environmentally friendly and easy to maintain in locations selected by the Scottish Government to avoid shipping, fishing and ferry routes, fish spawning grounds and seal or seabird colonies.

Once the full force of the sea has "proofed" those devices over a period of years (a process already underway at EMEC on Orkney), arrays of successful devices will be installed in the most energetic sites.

There will no more be one giant wave device than there is one kilometre-high wind turbine or one ten-mile deep coal mine. As device numbers rise, unit costs will fall – indeed some ocean energy developers may co- locate with offshore wind farms to minimise the costs of installation, maintenance, grid connection and disruption to other ocean users.

There will, of course, be visual intrusion and it won't be a doddle to extract energy from the sea.

But it can be done. And if political pressure is exerted now, the ocean energy revolution could also benefit hundreds of coastal and esturial villages in the same way community wind projects are starting to benefit moorland communities.

Weeks ago, in the midst of the election, land reformer Andy Wightman published evidence that the Crown Estates Commission do not own the seabed around Scotland but merely administer it.

Strangely, despite the chance of repatriating hundreds of millions of pounds in offshore leases, the Scottish Government has been slow to assert that "It's Scotland's Tide".

If they did, income-sharing marine energy projects could help struggling coastal communities regenerate.

If communities stood to gain a guaranteed annual 250,000 from wind how many would view energy development proposals differently?

How many communities might campaign for wind farms if they could help determine the size and location and share in the profits – or go one step further like the bold crofters of Pairc and buy the land upon which the wind farm will stand?

With a better community stake in energy projects, how many Scottish communities would champion medium-scale energy development instead of opposing it out of hand?

Urban communities could benefit too. Ironically, Europe's largest wind farm at Whitelee is just visible from Onthank, the deprived Kilmarnock housing estate whose worst social problems are currently being aired in The Scheme on BBC 1.

Community Energy Scotland set up a small wind farm in Castlemilk and has backed 50 urban renewables projects using solar, biomass, river hydro and wind energy.

Could an energy venture in Onthank allow the majority of tenants without a criminal record or drugs habit to generate income and self respect for their trashed community?

Might a neighbouring moorland community partner their efforts? Might the advent of Onthank-owned turbines encourage local youngsters into college – there are job vacancies at Whitelee right now.

What else but real control over real assets will encourage hopeless people and isolated communities to stop joining their political masters and planning for decline?

The big challenge is to make sure the renewables revolution doesn't just power homes but also transforms communities by handing control of assets to local people.