Scottish Water has handed an Aberdeenshire community group more than £4,000 funding as a result of its green energy use.
The water firm paid £4,206 to Mearns Community Council as a share of the revenues raised from a recently installed wind turbine at its Laurencekirk wastewater treatment works.
The payment is front-ended for the community – the sum they would be expected to earn from the turbine at the plant over the next 20 years.
The 80kW turbine was installed by Scottish Water Horizons, a subsidiary of Scottish Water which aims to drive forward the company’s green agenda. It generates 160,000kWh per year and has the potential to offset around 60 per cent of the treatment works’ electricity consumption per annum.
Scottish Water Horizons head Andrew Macdonald said: “We are pleased that we have been able to share the benefits of this renewable scheme to improve facilities and wellbeing for the local community.
“Investing in renewables supports economic growth, helps Scottish Water to become a low-carbon business and delivers tangible benefits for local communities over the longer term.
“The turbine at Laurencekirk is one of several renewable technologies now operating on our assets, with several treatment works now generating at least all, and in some cases more, of the energy they need to operate.”
Scottish Water’s general manager of energy Chris Toop said: “Scottish Water really tries to put the community at the heart of everything we do, both in terms of the early stages of consultation, in terms of whether it’s appropriate to put these technologies on our sites, and as we work through planning and implementation of the scheme and its great there is now the benefit to the local community at the end of that to be able to invest as they so wish.”
Scottish Water is one of Scotland’s largest single users of electricity. It requires approximately 445GWh per year.
In the last two years, the company has doubled the amount of renewable energy which can be generated at treatment works and in water mains to more than 50GWh.
