Highlands and Islands Green Energy Conference hears of progress and momentum

This year's gathering at the Kingsmills Hotel in Inverness in June was built around proof and building momentum.

From a Sumitomo factory that has moved from CGI render to production reality, multi-million Freeport investment, to five major transmission projects now in active construction, the question being asked in 2026 is no longer whether the Highlands can lead the UK's clean energy transition, it is how far and how fast that leadership can go?

GB Energy

The clearest external validation came from Guy Arnold, deputy director of supply chain at Great British Energy.

Arnold relocated to the Highlands six months ago specifically because of the region's opportunity.

GBE was set up to shift the balance of clean energy ownership back towards the British public.

Its five-year targets are ambitious: 15 gigawatts of generation in which it holds an ownership interest, billions in leveraged private investment, a thousand community energy projects supported, and 10,000 jobs created.

The first two investments are already live with a minority stake in the Pentland Offshore Wind Project, which has now secured a contract for difference in the most recent auction round.

A £40 million equity stake in Sheffield-based electrolyzer manufacturer ITM Power signals GBE's commitment to backing UK manufacturing for the long term.

The Energy Engineered in the UK programme, with a £300 million pool directed at offshore wind and network manufacturing, drew particular interest.

Arnold said a significant share of the opportunities it will support are expected to land in the Highlands and Islands.

For a region that has long generated energy for others while watching the manufacturing value flow elsewhere, that is a material shift in the deal.

Regional transformation

The scale of what the Highlands has achieved in five years came into sharpest focus during Highland Council leader Councillor Raymond Bremner's keynote.

Running through the milestones, green freeport status secured, Sumitomo landed, Global Energy Group expanding its HQ and SSEN investment escalating, Inverness increasingly recognised as a serious inward investment destination, Bremner made the case that the region has earned its standing as what he called "the powerhouse of the UK."

Iain Sinclair, chief strategy officer of Maraen, whose Port of Nigg base has staged some of the UK's largest offshore wind projects and is now home to Sumitomo's operational manufacturing facility, placed that transformation in its industrial context.

"We create our own luck," Sinclair said, "but now we know what working together actually produces."

SSEN Transmission's Christianna Logan provided the numbers that underpin that progress.

SSEN has secured 75 per cent of the transmission consents needed across its 11 strategic projects, with five now in construction.

The network will need to double, and then double again. Community benefit funding is already flowing to communities around those construction sites, and Logan noted that around half of people in the north of Scotland believe the transition isn't moving fast enough, which she read as an opportunity rather than a complaint.

Mel MacRae, representing DESNZ's Mission Control team in London, added the national picture: the UK reached 74 per cent clean power in 2024, with 95 cent the stated ambition by 2030.

Record-breaking CFD rounds have delivered offshore wind at prices now below the cost of new gas, with Scotland's projects among the strongest performers.

Community Partnership

The community buy-in panel moved the conversation from infrastructure to people, and to what genuine partnership between developers and communities looks like in practice.

Chris Thacker, communications manager at Fred. Olsen Renewables, whose company delivered the UK's first community benefit payment in 1996 and was recently negotiating the third iteration of that arrangement with the same community council, described a model built on decades-long relationships rather than transactional engagement.

East Lammermuir Community Council chair Chris Bruce described what sustained engagement has produced: an energy partnership manager working four days a week, a community development officer about to be appointed, a warm homes officer in post, and a nested structure of community benefit reaching from hyperlocal to East Lothian-wide.

His community's local place plan, covering EPC upgrades, heat networks, active travel and biodiversity, was developed with developers and transmission owners as genuine co-creators.

Community Energy Scotland's Cath Curd made the case for scaling that model. Community liaison groups, she argued, are "priceless", putting trusted local voices in the room with developers early, before positions harden, and creating conditions for partnership that delivers rather than delays.

Her organisation supports more than 450 communities across Scotland.

The Next Generation

One of the most upbeat sessions of the day featured four young people who have chosen to build careers in the Highlands through graduate apprenticeships.

Keira Wright of aes renewables, Angus Mearns of RSE (Ross-shire Engineering), Agnes Woo of timber company West Fraser and Darren MacLennan from the University Highlands and Islands made a quietly powerful case for a model that keeps talent in the region.

Their message to employers was to invest in young people early, and the returns, in loyalty, fresh thinking and people who want to stay, are considerable.

"Skills have to be transferred down the generations to keep businesses alive," Wright said.

The Workforce North initiative, described by project lead Claire Sim, is working to connect schools, colleges, employers and communities around the opportunities on the doorstep, and to ensure apprenticeships sit on an equal footing with the university pathway that has historically drawn young people away from the region.

The Workforce North initiative is a joint initiative with Skills Development Scotland and Highland Council.

What comes next?

Yvonne Crook of Highland CIC set the ambition at its highest level.

According to Highland CIC, communities around Loch Ness alone stand to receive more than £50 million in community benefit over the lifetimes of current developments.

The question she put to the room was whether that investment should be treated as a series of individual transactions or as the foundation for something transformational: a sustainable development alliance with a shared long-term strategy for the whole Highlands.

Councillor Bremner provided the closing argument from four years of watching potential become reality.

The Highlands, he said, has never stood on the sidelines of change, from the hydroelectric pioneers to the North Sea, it has always helped shape what comes next.

That instinct, applied now to clean energy, manufacturing, skills and community benefit, is what the conference was ultimately about.

"Too long, success has been measured by how much energy leaves the Highlands," he said. "The next phase of the transition should be measured by how much opportunity stays."