Island Fuel Poverty - Findings

In February and March 2026, the Panel engaged with the six Scottish local authorities with islands in their jurisdiction to explore their specific fuel poverty challenges. This report summarises the findings from these sessions.

Scottish Fuel Poverty Advisory Panel – Island Fuel Poverty Findings.pdf

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6. Priorities for tackling Island fuel poverty drivers and what needs to change

6.1. The Panel used its reflections to identify 6 priorities for discussion at the Roundtable. A summary of the discussion on these priorities is set out below. The summary of the discussion draws out both challenges and solutions.

Priority Summary Feedback Points
1. Increased investment in improving energy efficiency ensuring a fabric first approach. - Multi-year funding unlocks investment capacity both for delivery but also other funding sources. - Intervention sequencing is key – e.g. a fabric first approach aligning with post improvement measure support. Policy sequencing is needed too, or delays/vacuums result e.g. the long-awaited Social Housing Net Zero Standard. - Funding specifications need to recognise the higher cost of delivery in island communities.
2. Core funding for integrated advice and support services. - Local expertise is crucial in embedding new technology for vulnerable households and supporting energy literacy. - The advisory and support landscape is complex and therefore can be hard to navigate. Advice delivery models need to be as joined up as possible to meet needs fuel poverty or otherwise. - Multi year core funding would make advisory agents more resilient as well as creating capacity and building trust within the community. - Funding “autonomy” for advice and support, would be more effective without strict conditions set from the centre.
3. Leadership, an enhanced role for local authorities. - Island communities’ expectations of their local authorities are often very high. - Leadership is often constrained by limited resources, but where capacity exists, it can enable strong joined‑up working. e.g. the Western Isles linking up with renewable developers to explore housing for temporary workers which can transition to permanent Island homes when these workers leave. - Local authorities have traditionally played a role in developing capacity. They have a key role here given the Islands’ role in the energy transition but there are resource deficits. - There is a collective sense that the island voice is not heard, as is the case with the North of Scotland generally. This has led to the feeling there was a missed opportunity for the Islands Plan to engage.
4. Energy market reform and pricing, the support and the actions open to the Scottish Government. - Zonal pricing may have been dismissed but there are potentially other local options for intervention in the energy system, e.g., redistributing curtailed energy or establishing local generation and supply. - An innovative approach by UK Government and Ofgem would be to deliver an island tariff. - The Scottish Government has to champion the needs of communities both in the short term and long term to ensure that the energy market works for island communities, which it does not at the moment.
5. The effectiveness and structure of community benefits and how these can be used to tackle fuel poverty. - Consensus that community benefits and shared ownership of renewables should be used to alleviate fuel poverty. - Community benefits should be mandated at the planning stage, with recognition that the Scottish Government and local authorities also have levers as the planning authorities. [Recognising that, currently, the Newbury Principles would prohibit this]. - There needs to be a split between a regional and local approach allowing strategic and tactical deployment of community benefits.
6. The potential to access renewable electricity generation to tackle fuel poverty. - An energy framework is needed for the islands which recognises both collective and individual island place-based needs and opportunities. - Shared ownership offers opportunities at community, local & SG level in terms of revenue flows. - Curtailed energy, along with other energy sources which are not used, offer the potential for energy support if models can be found to capture them. There is a dependency on a robust infrastructure, e.g. the presence of working smart meters. - Current funding is channelled to pilot projects, often at the expense of mainstreaming successful ones. - Several innovative approaches and pilot projects are underway or being considered, demonstrating the appetite to change the energy system for local benefit.

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