Localised energy – opportunity or threat? For use in PowerPoint 2003 Rufus Ford 27 th March 2014

2 Who is SSE? Wholesale 12.8 GW generation capacity Gas production and gas storage Retail ~9m customer accounts for energy supply UK’s 2nd largest M&E contracting business Networks 130,000km electricity lines serving 3.7m buildings 50% of SGN, 75,000km gas pipes serving 5.7m buildings UK’s 4th largest telecoms network Support national decarbonisation and RE targets

Community benefit funds Local and regional Administered in-house Up to £45m investment by 2020 Few strings attached, communities decide how to spend the funds Can be put towards community energy projects 3

“Without significant investment from companies like SSE, it is difficult to see how the community energy sector will be able to flourish and grow with the speed necessary to move community action on renewable energy from a niche activity into mainstream delivery.” Peter Capener, Chair of BWCE Community energy finance model 4

Community co-investment Communities investing in a proportion of wind farms and taking the same share of the returns Pilot with Melness and Tongue community and Strathy South wind farm 5

Drivers and challenges Political push – e.g. Community Energy Strategy Trust Finance Community desires There are ways for us to be involved and we can help... 6

Opportunity or threat? Localised energy could be seen as competing with centralised energy and the large energy companies But the challenge is enormous, we won’t deliver alone We are choosing to see it as an opportunity, and to work with it 7

Challenge: do we really need localised electricity? 8

Thank you