►Council defends community energy price setting
Sir,
One of the huge anomalies of the Western Isles currently is the fact that we have
huge renewable energy potential and yet we have the highest levels of fuel poverty
in western Europe. The three oft-
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Letter: "Local electricity price setting system is wrong"
22 October 2015
The Outer Hebrides Energy Supply Company (Hebrides Energy) has been formed with the
aim to offer a bespoke community electricity tariff for households and business customers
in the Outer Hebrides directly impacting on fuel poverty.
However, the council administration,
at the last series of meetings, proposed to allow responsibility for setting the
base tariff to a private company.
In view of the fact that a private company's motives, as it is constituted to do so, is to maximise profit for shareholders, I, seconded by councillor Rae Mackenzie put forward an amendment that the responsibility of setting the price should be under Hebrides Energy.
This would ensure that the base tariff would be set with consideration to the people
of the islands and their circumstances firstly. We believe that the ESCo should be
designed to maximise the benefit to every household of the renewable energy potential
first and foremost.
Sadly, the decision for abdicating responsibility of the price
to the private company which was proposed by Councillor Alasdair Macleod and seconded
by councillor Donald Crichton gained support from the majority of councillors whereas
I am grateful to the SNP council group for voting for my amendment.
I find it unfortunate
that islanders will have a higher price of electricity as the private company adds
its margin when fuel poverty is causing such distress to 71% of households across
the islands and that this administration failed to take the price setting into public
control.
I, along with the Western Isles SNP group, will continue to battle for the
people of the islands and to ensure that our God-
Councillor Gordon Murray
Stornoway North