In 2011, the Shapinsay Development Trust (SDT) charity successfully erected its own 0.9 MW wind turbine, owned by Shapinsay Renewables Limited (SRL), a trading subsidiary to the charity. Although electricity generation—and thus community revenue—exceeded initial predictions, within a few years a considerable amount (around 30%, on average) of its production was being curtailed. Facing pressure to repay its Co-operative Bank loan, the SDT needed to assure the economic viability of its turbine. Members of the SDT came together, applied for, and received funding to participate in the €10.9 million Building Innovative Green Hydrogen systems in an Isolated Territory (BIG HIT) EU project. The project installed a 1 MW electrolyzer in Shapinsay that produces hydrogen fuel used to heat the Shapinsay primary school, power five Orkney Islands Council (OIC) vans, and power docked ferries and a building on the mainland.
This community energy project was studied by researchers at the University of Durham in 2017. Drawing from governance perspectives and field research, their ethnographic study describes governance implications associated with the shift to a community wind and hydrogen energy facility. Specifically, it pulls from local perspectives to illuminate pathways in which a particular community renewable energy political group considerably reshaped local power relations. The findings indicate that wind energy income and hydrogen production control created new political opportunities that have transformed governance on the island in novel ways: community legitimacy, state withdrawal, and private interdependence.