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Teddy Bears and Tigers

5 October 2014

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In recent years in Scotland, there has been significant policy and academic interest in community ownership and in renewable energy. A new paper, Teddy Bears and Tigers: How Renewable Energy Can Revitalise Local Communities, written by George Callaghan and Derek Williams (OU, Edinburgh) and published by the journal Local Economy, draws these two together and investigates how community-owned renewable energy projects can have an impact on communities.

The researchers gained access to the project database of Community Energy Scotland to gather primary and secondary data from a number of both large-scale revenue-generating and small-scale community energy projects. One of the key findings to emerge was the positive social impact of community renewables, particularly the nurturing of new networks and the improvement in community confidence. However, the authors also discuss the challenges and policy implications they found, which include funding, the relationship between the level of community ownership and local economic impact, and the need for further community empowerment.

In describing the structure of their community-owned renewables project, in this case a village-owned charitable trust, one respondent commented that 'We have teddy bears in the Trust, and tigers in the trading subsidiary.' It's a phrase the authors believe encapsulates both the initial vague motivating force amongst community activists that 'something needs to be done locally' and the more hard-headed skillset required to deliver a renewables project.

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