Seòmar agus comataidhean

In March 2010 I announced £100,000 in support of the Community Wellbeing Champions Initiative. So far the Initiative has been piloted in five areas across Scotland: Fife; Shetland; North Lanarkshire; South Lanarkshire, and Stirling.

Evaluation of these pilots is currently taking place, and a full report of the Initiative will be included in the second annual report to Parliament.

Where Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) was aware of community schemes that had started doing some preparatory work before the renewables contracts were announcement on 22 February, FCS built that knowledge into the arrangements by withholding the relevant forest blocks from the process. This has happened in the case of Dalavich, Strathyre and Mull.

Communities are welcome to flag up their interest during the eight month period if they want to pursue a renewables project under the National Forest Land Scheme (NFLS) prior to the list of sites being finalised by the developer. Once that list is established communities will have another opportunity to take forward sites via the NFLS scheme for non allocated sites. They will be able to engage with the developers to avail of the negotiated Forestry Commission Scotland deal for a longer period after the exclusivity period prior to a planning application being made.

A series of options were modelled ranging from the current leasing arrangement through joint ventures to Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) self development. Given FCS cannot borrow funding for such purposes the lease/joint version option was seen to be the best route to follow.

Forestry Commission Scotland estimate having 2GW of capacity installed (wind and hydro, excluding large-scale pumped storage) on the national forest estate by 2020.

No banks were involved in drawing up the contracts but financial advice was provided by Grant Thornton''s Edinburgh office. However, prior to the tendering exercise FCS received advice on renewable energy developments from Fortis Bank.

The project Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) undertook with Atkins Consultants had the main objective to build a GIS based analytical model to enable FCS to assess potential wind resource on the national forest estate. This objective was achieved and FCS routinely uses this to assess the potential of various forest blocks for different reasons. Atkins also ran the model as a part of the exercise and produced a report covering the NFE as part of the deliverables of the project. This, along with the analytical model was handed over to FCS in September 2008. Any report like this has its limitations and the main project output was the working model however, the report did provide the necessary confidence that there remained a reasonably significant wind energy resource on the NFE and that therefore it would be worth pursuing its development strategically. FCS has had no requests to release the report but would be happy to publish it on their website if required.

It will only be possible to say which communities will benefit once the developers have identified potential sites on the national forest estate. It is expected that this process will take up to eight month to complete.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-39697 on 14 March 2011. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

Marine Scotland has undertaken and issued regional locational guidance to help inform the future selection of sites. This guidance contains relevant information including, for example, information on environmental sensitivities, other marine users and the socio-economic structure of the area/region and sits within the wider marine planning structure being developed by Marine Scotland.

The regional locational guidance is informed by Marine Scotland''s on-going work including our programme of seabed mapping. This programme has acquired bathymetric data to get a more detailed understanding of the depth and shape of the surface of the seabed, as well as its character (i.e. rock, sand, mud, boulders etc.) than that previously available. This information has been made public in order to help inform the future selection of sites for offshore renewable energy developments.

The Scottish Government''s research programme and demonstration strategy will also provide information which can be used to inform regional locational guidance and the licensing process where appropriate.