 The final item of business today is the member's business debate on motion number 14109, in the name of Mike McKenzie, on community energy fortnight 2015. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would be grateful if those members who wish to speak in the debate could press the request to speak buttons now. I call on Mike McKenzie to open the debate at seven minutes please, Mr McKenzie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'm delighted to have secured this debate as an opportunity to highlight the significant contribution made by communities across the Highlands and Islands and indeed the rest of Scotland in ushering in a new energy future for Scotland. A future that is brighter, cleaner and greener than the past, a future where we have greater energy resilience and security and a future that is less dependent on a few big companies as the sole providers of energy. I share the Scottish Government's vision for a future where communities are empowered in every sense of the word, not just politically, but also economically. Able to invest in and develop their own community assets and opportunities and community energy projects are an obvious opportunity, capturing the benefits of renewable energy and producing funding streams that in turn will empower other projects in a virtuous spiral that has enabled many communities to tackle local problems more effectively than they could be tackled by other agencies. That's why I'm so glad that the Scottish Government has set ambitious targets for community and local owned renewables of 500 megawatts by 2020, and that's why I'm so glad that, thanks to the efforts of the small businesses and communities all over the country, we are well over halfway towards meeting that target. That's why I'm also glad that the Scottish Government has set up and invested in the care loan fund to de-risk the early pre-planning stages of community renewable projects. My own passion for community owned renewables began when the dancing ladies of Gia Scotland's first community owned wind turbines were erected in 2003. I was then a board member of my own community's development trust and I was lucky enough to be invited along with representatives from community organisations all over Scotland to attend a conference over a weekend in Gia to learn from their experience. The generosity of the Gia folk and sharing their had-one knowledge and their generous hospitality and what was a wonderful weekend are etched in my memory. One further thing, not quite so positive, also remains etched in my memory. The local planning officer who dealt with the application gave a presentation. He started his talk to the personal good folk and audience by saying in tones of bureaucratic bombast that there were only two words in the planners lexicon, no and maybe. I was as shocked as the majority of the listeners. I agree with him that there should be two words that guide our planners and these two words undoubtedly should be yes and maybe. I touch on this because it is often negotiating the hurdles within our planning system that are the first hurdles that are experienced by communities considering renewable energy projects. That is why I am pleased that the First Minister announced a Brute and Branch review of our planning system two weeks ago when Parliament resumed. Our planning system should be the midwife of sustainable development and community renewable energy projects are often the embodiment of the principles of sustainable development. Such community renewable projects need the assistance and not the resistance of local planners. We have come a long way since the dancing ladies of Gia were first directed. I was particularly pleased to see the successful deployment of the first community-owned tidal generator off the Shetland island of Yale last summer. The developers of the device Nova innovation are due much credit, not least because at least 25% of the total development expenditure was spent on Shetland with, for example, the small local business Shetland composites manufacturing the carbon fibre turbine blades. There are many, many more good examples of community-owned renewable projects. Many of them aim at tackling fuel poverty or paying for the badly needed renovation of local homes as the community on Gia are doing. There are many, many, certainly. Jamie McGregor, could we have Mr McGregor's microphone please? Mr McGregor, do you have your card in? Many thanks, Jamie McGregor. On that point, the member makes the point about the dancing ladies of Gia and the money that they bring in, but why does he think that the Gia community is in such a bad way financially despite that? Mike McKenzie, I'll give you your time back. I don't necessarily accept the proposition that the Gia community is in a bad way financially. Often communities have to borrow money and there are times when you look at their balance sheet properly where you realise, yes, there's a bit of borrowing but overall they're actually in a good situation and I think that the people in Gia are due great credit in being prepared to shoulder some risk in borrowing money to advance their projects so I don't necessarily accept that view that they're in a bad financial situation. But there are many, many more possibilities for further community-owned renewable energy projects and it would be remiss, Presiding Officer, if I did not say that future projects are threatened by the UK Government energy policy by a UK Government which is forsaking renewable energy in favour of nuclear power by a UK Government that's failed to invest in the necessary upgrades of the grid infrastructure necessary to allow renewable energy projects to develop by a UK Government that's significantly reducing feed-in tariffs as well as bringing the ROC scheme to a close early. Presiding Officer, it's important to realise that it's not just onshore wind projects that are threatened by the energy policies, all renewable energy technologies are threatened. It's time that the full powers over energy are devolved to this Parliament so that the Scottish Government can continue to support Scotland's communities in harvesting the benefits of local community energy. Thank you. We now turn to the open debate. Speeches of four minutes are so pleased and I call Sarah Boyack to be followed by Murdo Fraser. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to congratulate Mike MacKenzie for securing this debate tonight. I think it's both timely and important. I very much welcome his motion. In celebrating community energy fortnight 2015, we should record a celebration of the fact that there are 144 projects that we know about that bring in communities around the region of £10 million of benefit every single year. That is absolutely something to celebrate. I want to highlight that renewable energy and energy efficiency should go together. Particularly for rural communities where people are living in hard-to-heat homes, one of the big benefits of community energy schemes has been for the capacity for communities to help reinvest in the housing stock in their areas. Not just to create new energy that people can draw on but to reduce the amount of energy that they actually need to consume. It's that win-win that I think we need to highlight. There is a fuel poverty and crisis, so it's partly about the supply of energy being owned at the community level and the opportunity of community co-operatives but it's also about the retrofitting of people's existing homes. No, I want to crack on. I've only got two and a half minutes, Mike. I want to congratulate Mike. I want to particularly welcome the coalition because it's an important coalition with the knowledge on environmental campaigning and experience that comes from friends of the earth. I say that as a member. With the expertise that comes from the energy savings trust, with the knowledge about our buildings that comes from the national trust for Scotland and from the national union of students, many of whose members are living in incredibly expensive rented accommodation with really, really bad energy efficiency standards, that is a powerful combination to lobby for change. I very much agree with the comments that were made about the retrograde step that there is with the renewables obligation and the feed-in tariff being dramatically reduced at the UK level. It is already jeopardising investment in renewables projects and that is something that we should be campaigning against and pushing the UK Government to change. I don't think that anyone would dispute the fact that mature technologies, as the costs come down, we can reduce the sub-state and target on the newer innovative renewables that we want to see. However, the cavalier approach that has been taken puts jobs at risk, so I hope that we can work together to get that changed. As a former planner, I want to agree with Mike that there is more that can be done on planning. However, one of the biggest things that we could have done in this Parliament over the last 10 years would have been to remove the requirement for planning applications on small-scale applications, permitted development rights. I have been campaigning on that for over a decade now. It was in my member's bill, it was something that I campaigned for in the 2009 Climate Change Act. It sounds like a small thing but the red tape that is tied up in people having to apply for planning permission for solar PV, for small projects on their houses has meant that many people have not gone through the planning process because of the cost and that is something that we could fix instantly. I would like to ask the minister if that is something that he will now act on as energy minister. There are so many people who have missed out on the opportunity of feeding tariff. If the minister would make that statement, he would give some support to the emergent community projects. I would like to see more on community projects supported by the Scottish Government. There are many more that we would like to see moving ahead. I myself have visited projects in Edinburgh, Fife, Ingea, Aberdeen, South Lanarkshire and Glasgow. The most recent community energy project in the Harlaw energy project in the Bellerno area of Edinburgh will make a real difference in terms of energy production, but it will also give a benefit to the shareholders. Surely that is something that we should be encouraging across the country. Benefits for individuals, benefits for communities and reinvesting in green jobs. We need more of that in Scotland. Let's hope that the community energy fortnight will raise awareness and raise political support for action both in Scotland and at the UK level. Before we move on, I remind members to use full names. It is important for the official report and for the public watching proceedings. I have a wee bit of time in hand if members care to take interventions, but it is members' choice. Murdo Fraser, to be followed by Liam McArthur. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and welcome back. Can I start by congratulating Mike Mackenzie on securing this debate and welcoming the opportunity to support his motion? I thought that Mr Mackenzie made a very good speech. As he might expect, I didn't agree with all of it and will come to the points of disagreement later, but I thought that he made the case very well. I am very pleased to support the principle of community energy. The first community energy fortnight was held in 2013, and it has become in a short space of time and established fixture in the calendar. I am sure that all members can point to community projects in their own areas that have been a success. I just like to mention two in my own region. The first is the Levenmouth community project at Methel in Fife, which was awarded £4.3 million from the local energy Scotland challenge fund in July. It is located at the hydrogen office in Methel and will generate renewable energy for use in creating hydrogen gas to run a fleet of up to 25 hydrogen vehicles. The scheme will use hydrogen as an energy store for grid balancing on the local energy park. Given the growing interest in energy storage, it is encouraging to see such an innovative project being supported. The second project that I would highlight is the hydroelectric scheme at Callander in Stirlingshire. It was a 425 kilowatt scheme on the Stank Burn, built with over £2 million worth of grants and loans, and hoping to generate around £1.3 million kilowatt hours of energy per year for the next 20 years. I think that these are both good examples of the sort of projects that are being supported. I suppose that it was inevitable during this debate that there would be some criticism of the recent moves by the UK Government to reduce subsidies for wind power announced earlier in the year. I know that we will have the opportunity to debate this issue in more detail on Thursday, so I just like to simply point out to members and remind them that these are reforms that have been widely welcomed by many communities across Scotland. The economist Tony Mackay has calculated that the level of subsidy for onshore wind power was between 2.5 and three times higher than that that was necessary. The result being that consumers have been paying higher bills for too long to support wind projects that should have been sustainable on a much lower level of subsidy. I welcome the initiative that the UK Government has taken that will deliver lower bills to consumers and highlight the need for a more balanced energy policy. I have two specific issues that I wanted to raise in connection with the Cares Fund, which Mike Mackenzie referred to. I support the principle that community projects enjoying local support are able to be assisted in this manner. It is important that what are badged as community projects are, in fact, that. It is not just a means of developers trying to increase their chances of getting consent for schemes. I am aware of two specific examples that have been drawn to my attention in different parts of the country, one very close to where I live, where commercial projects have been promoted by developers and have then attracted very strong opposition. Those have effectively been re-badged as community projects with the help of sympathetic individuals living in the area. Of course, the same level of opposition still exists. I believe that a community project, in order to attract financial support from the Cares Fund, which is taxpayers' money, should be able to demonstrate that it has strong community support. The second point is a related one. I am aware that payments have been made in the past from the Cares scheme for community developments, but where, in fact, there has been very substantial community opposition to what is being proposed. The community development is promoted by a very small minority of individuals in the community and faces substantial opposition. If I have time, I am happy to give it a hand. Mike Mackenzie. Would you accept that some projects of a scale or a complexity that mean that it would not be feasible for communities to take them forward on their own, but it is perfectly valid for communities to do so in partnership with commercial developers? I do not disagree with that intervention, but I think that Mr Mackenzie is rather the point that I am making, which is that if it is a community project it must be able to demonstrate community support. What has been very galling in the past is for the majority of a local community who are opposed to a development to see their money as taxpayers being used to fund a planning application, which they are then having to oppose without any commensurate public support for their opposition. It seems to me that there is a very simple way to cure this problem, which is to require community projects before they can attract financial support to demonstrate that they have substantial local support, perhaps with the support of the community council or perhaps through a local referendum before they are able to access public funds. I hope that this is something that the Scottish Government would be prepared to look into further. I am happy to support the development of community energy and the good work that is going on. I would close by again commending Mike Mackenzie for securing this debate. Many thanks. I now call Liam McArthur to be followed by Alison Johnstone. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I join others in congratulating Mike Mackenzie on securing this debate, one that enables us to put on record our collective support for community energy fortnight and our thanks to those involved in the Community Energy Coalition. Given that there will be an opportunity on Thursday to pick up more general issues in relation to renewable energy, I will focus my brief remarks this evening on some specific aspects of community energy. Firstly, picking up a theme that Murdo Fraser was worrying away at at the end of his remarks, I would reiterate that there is a distinction between community and local energy. Both undoubtedly have an important part to play, a danger in Scottish Minister setting an overall target for both that the two somehow become conflated. They are different, they deliver different benefits, and I can understand some of the concerns raised by Murdo Fraser, even if I don't entirely share them. Community ownership and co-ordinated action on energy are a powerful means of embedding renewable energy, energy efficiency and local value into our communities. They also provide practical grassroots initiatives that help to transform communities through enabling people to take responsibility. The Shappansea Development Trust's Winter AgriEnergy project, quoted in the local energy Scotland briefing, is an excellent example in just one of the islands in my constituency with a good track record in this regard. I see that reflected not just in Shappansea, but in a wide range of different projects in Orney, which I think provides a good but by no means perfect illustration of a mixed economy when it comes to renewables. I'll come to more of those in a moment, including potential opportunities for matching local supply and demand more effectively and productively than happens at present. First, though, I must reflect on the problems created, as Mike Mackenzie alluded to, for community energy in Orney by the continued limits of grid capacity. As one constituent with intimate knowledge of these issues, observed to me recently, the requirement for community projects to be actively managed on a non-firm grid connection calls into question their commercial viability. The active management system was an innovative solution to sweat the local grid asset, but appears now to be curtailing development despite strong community demand and support. Being more innovative in identifying local sources of demand would help, of course. For example, the heating system for the replacement Balfour hospital in Kirkwall must make maximum use of installed renewables already in place. Anything less, I would suggest to the minister, would be not just a missed opportunity but a costly dereliction of duty on this key landmark project. Meanwhile, a recent ORF audit funded by Community Energy Scotland and undertaken by Aquatera showed that marine diesel is the biggest fuel use in Orney. Again, the inevitable replacement, this time of the inter-island ferry fleet, offers an opportunity to test, learn and demonstrate the use of renewables through hydrogen as a renewable sourced fuel. Similar to the case highlighted by Murdo Fraser earlier, the local council and Community Energy Scotland are on the case with the Surf and Turf project with Government funding, using hydrogen to run the ships tied up at the key and training mariners in using hydrogen, preparing them in turn for the impending hydrogen economy. Good innovative projects that would ease grid constraints for other community projects, while utilising local resources and developing a local skills base. Community Action also offers scope to more effectively tackle fuel poverty, including extreme fuel poverty, where Orney sits top of the table nationwide. Thaw and its predecessor bodies have done excellent work looking at linking local generation with local affordable warmth, including affordable tariffs. While that is a highly regulated area, I am in no doubt that there are opportunities here with the right support to make a real difference in addressing this scourge on my community and in our society. Finally, Deputy Presiding Officer, we have seen recently that without the restraint of Liberal Democrats in coalition, the UK Tory Government are quite happy to cut support for renewables. One effect of this is to ensure that around £100 million of community-based renewables projects will not now go ahead. Can I therefore urge the minister to press his UK counterpart for genuine financial differentiation for so-called community fits? I am sure that that would make a difference in helping to deliver more of the sorts of projects that are at the heart of community energy fortnight and deliver the wide range of benefits that I have seen first-hand in Orney. Thank you very much indeed. Many thanks and I now call Alison Johnstone to be followed Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to take part in this debate during community energy fortnight, and I thank Mike McKenzie for giving us the opportunity to debate this topic this evening. I welcome the focus in the motion on energy efficiency too, not just the promotion of renewable energy, as we can't benefit fully from investment in energy if we don't have wind-tight, water-tight, well-insulated homes. As we have heard, community energy fortnight celebrates community-owned renewable energy projects, and it aims to promote communities' owning and generating energy together. Presiding Officer, I believe that we can't overstate the importance of this topic and that it can and should form a more central plank of our energy policy. As friends of the earth say in their briefing, in the context of climate change and the historical carbon debt of industrialised countries, our renewable energy transition is imperative, but it is clear that this essential transition has many potential benefits. Renewables lend themselves to community ownership in a way that other fossil fuels don't, in a way that nuclear doesn't, in a way that unconventional gas won't. Community-owned renewables can help us address the power imbalance that promotes inequality in the current system, which is centralised and inflexible, and it has resulted in the monopoly of big six companies. Scotland is energy-rich, but access to this abundance isn't as equitable as it should be. Even the World Bank has recognised that business as usual will not remotely suffice to meet the goals of clean and universal energy. We will, of course, on hearing such a statement, think of the 1 billion-plus people in developing countries who live without access to electricity, but we should also consider those who suffer from extreme fuel poverty here in Scotland. Earlier this year at Energy Action Scotland's conference, we learned that 71 per cent of homes in the Western Isles are regarded as being in fuel poverty. There are many benefits to enabling willing communities in Scotland to play an important role in meeting carbon, renewables and climate change targets that are not worth fighting for. I do believe that there is a universal will in this Parliament to demand change and to demand investment in this important area. I am a shareholder in Harlow Hydro, and it has much in common with other projects that we have heard about this evening. The learning that those small projects are gaining, it will be shared. The pathways to such projects will be smoother. The projects can share stumbling blocks, they can develop their understanding of the Department for Energy's websites, they can discuss next steps and, most importantly, they can discuss their successes. We know two projects that have tried to get off the ground in Portobello and Leith, the water of Leiths, looking at hydro feasibility at the moment. We are on track to deliver almost twice as much renewable energy from community renewables as the Scottish Government's target of 2020 of 500 megawatts. Let's increase that target to 1 gigawatt and aim for two by 2030, because there are so many benefits if we commit to and invest in delivering clean, low-carbon energy. There are local employment opportunities, community development funds and fuel poverty alleviation. If we look at what is happening in Denmark, for example, it has a right to invest legislation and that requires developers to offer 20 per cent ownership of wind projects to local communities. 70 to 80 per cent, an incredible figure of wind turbines in Denmark are under some form of community ownership. It has the world's first island entirely renewably powered. 11 onshore and 10 offshore turbines and it's this bottom-up approach that has enabled that community to invest in the things that are important to them, whether it's a 3G football pitch, whether it's a youth club, whether, as Sarah Boyack mentioned, it's better housing. There are fantastic examples in Denmark and in Germany that citizens and communities have been the driving force for not only the development of renewable energy as a revolution but their acceptance as well. That is very, very important. I'd maybe just like to remind Mardo Fraser that fossil fuels receive billions of pounds of public subsidy, an on-going situation and certainly many of the constituents who write to me would like to see that transferred into the clean, green, low-carbon technology of the future. Thank you. Thank you very much. I now call Chick Brody to be followed by Claudia Beamish. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, thank Mike McKenzie for bringing the debate to the chamber this evening. Mike is a great champion of renewables and combined with communities, particularly rural communities. Some of us have learned a lot from Mike. As the motion says, our local community projects play a vital role in meeting our carbon and renewables targets, but they also make a major contribution to the overall economic performance of rural areas and the country generally. It's not just about wind. The term community energy is used in a variety of different contexts, including electricity generation, good relationship and collective purchasing power. Not so much community benefits, which not all that long ago were seen to be somewhat narrow, divisive and not necessarily directed to longer-term returns on investment in communities. I believe, Presiding Officer, that there have to be certain common characteristics in any community energy scheme. For example, one ordinary people involved in managing and running the projects through co-operatives or development trusts and being able to access the required finance to allow them to set up their projects. Two, where there is a democratic and non-corporate structure. Three, where there can be tangible local outcomes for people living or working close to the projects themselves. Four, the profits then go back to the community or are reinvested in other community energy schemes. There is a bit of an analogy between wind turbines and the revolving door for community investment. Of course, the community empowerment bill supports local energy companies also in achieving their goals. The main policy goal of the bill empowers community bodies through the ownership of land and buildings and strengthening their voices and decisions that matter to them, no less than on energy provision. As has been mentioned, the planning process is also important in this area. Perhaps all schemes should be mandated to ensure that they hold pre-application discussions with local communities to allow extensive and inclusive discussions to take place around community ownership, co-ownership, rewards and benefits. The Government, as we know, has set an ambitious target of the equivalent of 100 per cent demand for electricity being met from our renewable sources by 2020. There is also a target of 500 megawatts through locally owned schemes, again targeted for 2020. The Scottish Government has assisted community projects through the community and renewable energy scheme, the renewable energy infrastructure fund and the £20 million local energy fund. There are some great examples of local schemes throughout Scotland, but there are opportunities for many more. Community Energy Scotland is, of course, a registered charity that aims to build confidence, resilience and wealth at a community level through sustainable energy development. In its submission to the Smith commission, it highlighted significant obstacles to realising the potential. There is considerable scope for innovation through smarter grid management, local supply chain arrangements and smarter approaches to demand management. However, the biggest obstacle is that all main incentives for renewable energy development for renewables are, of course, reserved and controlled by Westminster. We suggest that the new centralised contracts for difference makes it much harder, indeed, for community projects to access because of its cost and complexity. What is essential is that the power to determine and set renewable energy incentive policies, levels and licences should be fully devolved enabling the Scottish Parliament and Government to apply an effective development regime to meet Scottish requirements and, in turn, with the community empowerment bill, which would certainly help to achieve the objective. Local authorities should be encouraged to demonstrate leadership by working and supporting local community groups. In conclusion, community energy projects play a vital role in employment, in building physical and social capital, in combating fuel poverty and, of course, in helping Scotland to reach its renewable energy targets. We should do all that we can to support existing schemes and encourage new schemes across Scotland. Thank you very much. Our final open debate speaker before I call the minister is Claudia Beamish. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I too want to thank Mike Mackenzie for bringing in this significant debate to the chamber today and for the comprehensive briefing that he and his office also provided. I want to recognise the contribution of the Scottish Community Energy Coalition in community energy fortnight 2015. The development of community energy is a climate justice issue, as Alison Johnstone has also touched on. Not only globally in the lead-up to the Paris summit, but here in Scotland itself, as I have stressed on a number of occasions previously, from rural to urban, there are many different models for community energy to enable power and warm homes for our people. Friends of the Earth briefing, community power building on success, draws attention to, I quote, the recent European energy package, which talks of putting citizens at the heart of energy transition. As a member of the Scottish Parliament co-operative group of MSPs, I want to start by highlighting the value of co-operative models in this context. Energy for all, one of the coalition members, has been a key player in this regard. The spirit of Lanarkshire in my own region, the wind energy co-op, is now fully up and running, and I was at the launch with the former MP Tom Greatricks, who was supportive of it as well. Having raised 2.7 million in 2013, both developments, Nuttbury near Colburn and West Browncast on the Australian, are now fully on-stream. Despite relatively poor wind speeds in some cases and some technical issues, the 906 members of the co-operative have just enjoyed a return of 7.63% for the period up to March 2015, and the board of the co-op is now looking for ways to use some of the profits to support local communities in the coming years. In an urban context, the Edinburgh community solar co-operative launch will take place at the end of this month, and I wish that group well as well in commending the co-operative model. Some of the co-operative models are for part of a larger multinational wind farm development, and others are per se in their own right, working together in their communities. The other point I want to make in the short time I have left is I want to take a step back and look at the potential of the land reform bill in relation to community energy in the future. In the past, I visited Dumfries House, and along with Douglas and Angus estate and a number of estates across Scotland, they have installed biomass boilers which tenants get a benefit from. In their submission to the Rural Affairs Committee, the Ruleg estate points out, and I quote, I'm so sorry, if only. I'm about to let three acres of ground to a company who plan to install mini-hydro schemes to generate electricity. This will not just benefit us at the lodge, but the residents of Letterfern as well. My view of the proposed land reform bill is that it will be of no advantage to Scotland to remove certain land from landlords for it to be managed by local communities. NHS Health Scotland's 2012 to 2017 corporate strategy, a fairer, healthier Scotland, has a very different view. In its submission to the Rural Affairs Committee, NHS Health Scotland sets out that our vision of Scotland, in which all of our people and communities have a fairer share of the opportunities, resources and confidence to live longer and healthier lives. I quote again, The overall case studies where Scottish land has transferred to community ownership have highlighted a number of potential benefits. For example, community ownership of land in rural areas has enabled investment in local resources such as social housing and renewable energy schemes, which in turn have helped to increase the population and school numbers. I would like to add myself and the bringing of local jobs. Part 5 of the land reform bill sets out the right to buy land to further sustainable development. I am clear that this should include looking favourably on community purchase of land for community energy use. SCEC believes that community energy can and should among other things, and I end with this quote, encourage people to act co-operatively to create sustainable communities and give everyone an equal opportunity to own and control shared assets democratically. I gain point our future vision to the land reform bill and hope that that will be taken into account in that context. Thank you very much. Can I now invite Fergus Ewing to respond to the debate, Minister? Seven minutes or so please. Thank you, Prime Minister. I thank her due to Mike Mackenzie for giving us the opportunity tonight to debate community energy for tonight, which is supported across the chamber and rightly. So, there was a prolonged discussion of the Dancing Ladies of Gia about whom I had not heard before. I wondered at first if they were a sort of Caledonian equivalent of the Fully Berger, but I rapidly learnt that that was not so. But we went on swiftly to to extol the benefits of community energy and can I say that Mike Mackenzie is, and I know this from my own knowledge, a doughty campaigner who has spent a huge amount of his time devoted to helping communities to take benefit of the resources on their doorstep. So, I thank him very much for the work that he does and continues to do in this important area. I want to respond to some points in case I omit to do so and to answer Sarah Boyack. We are keen on extending permitting development rights. We are having a consultation in relation to air-source heat pumps. However, if she wants to write to me about solar PV and small projects then I undertake to give that consideration. In principle, I think that she is absolutely right that we do not want the work of our planners taken up with unnecessary applications. We want to remove that and let them get on with the more controversial issues. Murdo Fraser said that communities that were not in support of projects were in a difficult situation. I think that I would say to Mr Fraser that he did not give any examples of projects to which he was alluding. It may be because there is sensitivity but if he wants to do that then of course we can look at that. I am hopeful that we will see that the Scottish Government has good practice principles for shared ownership of onshore renewable energy developments. A set of good practice principles which, as it happens, I am launching later this evening will set out very clearly the good practice in this regard. Although I can assure him that already all CARES community applicants have to be properly constituted community groups not for profit. I think that it is true that there are communities where there are schemes for delivering substantial returns and where not necessarily every member of the community supported the scheme originally. I do not know of many community members who want to send back the money or the benefit but he raises a point but there were not any examples there. I am grateful to the minister for coming. I am very happy to write to the minister with some specific examples. I did not want to embarrass any individuals by naming them but I am very happy to write to the minister if he wants to investigate the matter further. I am happy to receive such correspondence but I hope that the launch of the shared ownership principle should help to avoid any such issues by promoting good practice. The overall message that we got from Mr Fraser and others referred to a calendar community scheme that is delivering up to £2.85 million over 20 years and which I believe may help fund matters including new businesses, transport links for health service, helping young people. I can mention many other projects in Mull, Point and Sandwick. Liam McArthur mentioned many in his constituency which is in many ways the renewables capital of Scotland. Alison Johnstone referred to Harlaw Hydro which I had the pleasure of opening three weeks ago. I did not know that she was a shareholder but good luck. A good commercial return promised, I understand, from the development trust. Sarah Boyack mentioned Claudia Beamish, Jake Brody, all mentioned examples of communities around the country that are benefitting 140 schemes, £9 million a year. It is also not just the money. It is the empowerment of communities working together for a common purpose. I think that it brings many people in communities together for a common purpose and a sense of creating something, for children. At the Harlaw Hydro Opening Service the local primary schools children sang a song which they had written for the occasion. There was something quite moving about the occasion of creating a benefit that will last for 100 years. Liam McArthur. I am grateful to the minister for taking the intervention. I suggested in my own remarks that there is an important distinction between community-based projects and individual projects, both of whom I undoubtedly deliver benefits for the community, but they deliver different types of benefits by having that global target of 500 megawatts for community and individual projects. Is he able to give the chamber a sense of what the breakdown is in terms of community projects as opposed to individual projects? I will leave him to undertake to, in a sense, separate out those targets in future. I can come back to Mr McArthur, maybe later in the week in the second debate, more full debate we will be having on that. I can say that of course there is community benefit and there is community ownership. We support both, but I think that community ownership is something that we aspire to as the best option possible. In the good practice principles there are three options about who ultimately owns the project. There is a joint venture, a shared revenue and a split ownership model. Each of those is appropriate in different occasions. Flexibility is very much part of what we wish to encourage communities. Cares has been mentioned by Mr Fraser in particular. I just want to extol the practical benefits of Cares, which provides first of all information a start-up grant of up to £20,000 framework contractors to support communities. The local energy Scotland has contractors who really go around Scotland, experts helping communities, great human skills as well, to navigate some of the differing views in communities too. A pre-planning loan of up to £150,000, developer officer network again with local energy Scotland and a Cares toolkit for community investment module. I mean I've mentioned these in about a minute. In fact this represents thousands of hours of work, of painstaking work. We encourage commercial developers to go for community ownership and I think that's a good thing. The less positive views, sadly, is the attack by the UK Government on renewables. Reference was made to a report which says that the renewables get more support than they should. Well, the level of support was actually set by the UK Government not so very long ago, so I don't think you can have it both ways. Presiding Officer, I don't think in the time I've got I can go over all of the concerns we have about the attack on fits, the inhibiting of the green investment bank from supporting aggregated community projects, the removal of pre-accreditation which is going to create uncertainty and confusion and already is in investors but the key message here is that we are, I think almost all of us or all of us in support of community projects. The frustration is that in Westminster recent policy decisions which perhaps we can come back in debate in more details on another occasion, we fear will have the effect of inhibiting and perhaps even black blocking community projects just at the time when I sense that there's a real momentum in Scotland behind these projects because more and more communities in Scotland have seen that they work and deliver enormous benefits. So it's above politics, it would be truly tragic if at a time when we are just beginning to see the community energy movement start to gain an unstoppable momentum if it was caught in its tracks because of the lack of support by Westminster. So I hope we can debate those particular matters perhaps later in the week but I finish by commending Mike Mackenzie and everybody who's taken part in the debate for the support of community energy in Scotland. Thank you. That concludes Mike Mackenzie's debate on community energy Fortnite 2015 and I now close this meeting of Parliament.