The Koehler Group takes its environmental and community obligations seriously. We are committed to minimising any potential impacts, delivering tangible benefits locally, and ensuring the project aligns with Scotland’s renewable energy targets, helping secure affordable, clean power for future generations. Environmental protection is a legal requirement: surveys of wildlife, habitats, watercourses, archaeology, and landscape character are all part of the planning submission.
We are currently still in the planning stage, and many Environmental Impact Assessment studies – including landscape, visual, noise, ecology, ornithology and cultural heritage assessments are ongoing, which have and will help form the final proposal.
All findings will be shared publicly on the ECU (Scottish Energy Consents Unit) portal, with our full application. We will continue to engage with the community and ensure your views are heard.
Support for Insch Hospital has been one of the most common types of feedback during the public consultation process. Our intention is to work closely with the community and NHS Grampian to explore how the community benefit fund could support local healthcare. We welcome working with local organisations to help identify realistic, deliverable options that reflect local needs and deliver lasting impact.
Surveys of the site are being undertaken to establish where sensitive water features are located. A detailed Hydrology and Hydrogeology Assessment will identify every private water supply in and around the site. If a supply could be at risk from construction, then we would assess potential changes to the wind farm design. This includes repositioning the location of turbines, access tracks, and drainage routes to ensure they are set away from any private water supply. Buffer zones and spill prevention measures are standard on all Scottish wind farm sites, as required by SEPA.
If a risk cannot be removed entirely, Scottish Government guidance and SEPA rules require us to put alternative arrangements in place, so that no household is left without water.
If you rely on a private water supply and want to make sure it is included in our surveys, please contact koehler@mucklemediagroup.co.uk directly so we can log its location.
As part of the development process, we have been undertaking an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) which will help inform the final project design. Many of the studies included in this assessment – such as landscape, visual, noise, ecology, ornithology, and cultural heritage – are still ongoing.
Therefore, at this stage, we don’t yet have final locations for the turbines or BESS. Under the Electricity Act 1989 and forthcoming Electricity Network Infrastructure reforms, grid operators require final turbine layout and capacity data before confirming grid connection. These will be informed by ongoing environmental and technical surveys.
Shared ownership is when a community group buys a financial stake in the project and receives a share of the revenue it generates over its lifetime. This is different from the community benefit fund as it is not a grant, it is an investment that pays a return. For communities, it can be a way to generate long-term income that stays local and is controlled locally.
We typically follow the advice of the Scottish Government on Community Shared ownership. The Scottish Government’s Good Practice Principles actively encourage developers to offer communities a shared ownership opportunity as standard on all new onshore wind projects. We are aware of that expectation and take it seriously.
We are looking for suggestions or input from the community on whether there is firstly an appetite for shared ownership in the project, and what sort of structure would best suit the community. Advice is available from the Scottish Government from Local Energy Scotland (LES), on how a community can mobilise to consider shared ownership in a wind farm project. If you would like to raise this directly, please contact koehler@mucklemediagroup.co.uk.
If the project receives consent, KRE UK will provide a community benefit package in line with the Scottish Government’s Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments, which currently recommends a benchmark value of £5,000 per installed megawatt per year.
For example, this would equate to £250,000 per year for the lifetime of a 50 MW wind farm project. That would mean over £8 million invested locally over a 35-year operating period.
At this stage, it is too early to make a formal commitment regarding a LEDS scheme. Helping local communities reduce their energy bills via this scheme is something we are keen to explore and we believe that it could be a good use for some of the community benefit funding. If this is something you are interested in, please send an enquiry to koehler@mucklemediagroup.co.uk.
Koehler Renewable Energy (KRE) is a family-owned company founded in 2012 as a subsidiary of the Koehler Group headquartered in Oberkirch, in the southwest of Germany. With the company establishment of Koehler Renewable Energy UK Ltd. in September 2021, Koehler Renewable Energy expanded its activities in the UK and other European countries. The company is based in Dundee, Scotland, and focuses on onshore wind and hydropower projects in the UK. We pride ourselves on meaningful and ongoing community engagement and are committed to supporting economic growth and collaboration within the community.
Koehler Renewable Energy is sustainably shaping the energy transition in Germany and also abroad. Koehler Renewable Energy’s experts cover all stages of the value chain: acquisition, planning, development and the seamless long-term ownership and operation of the plants. Together with business partners, numerous projects have already been implemented in the fields of biomass cogeneration, onshore wind power, photovoltaics and hydropower. New energy technologies are also in focus.
Together with various partners, our experienced team has already implemented projects worth several hundred million euros that generate over 268,000 MWh of electricity, over 23,000 MWh of heat and over 638,000 tons of steam annually (as of June 2022). Koehler Renewable Energy is thus making an important contribution to Koehler Group’s sustainability strategy, with the aim of covering all the energy required for the production of Koehler Paper by generating renewable energy with its own plants by 2030 at the latest.
The maximum capacity of the planned wind farm will be 84.8 MW and is set to include a battery energy storage system (BESS). 64.8 MW (Wind) and 20 MW (BESS).