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Forestry Commission Scotland split the geographical areas of the national forest estate into five lots.

In four of the five lots there are two companies given exclusivity for the eight month period, one dealing with schemes under 5MW site potential and the other over 5MW. In the fifth lot both development segments are dealt with by the same company. It is not intended that exclusive options will be granted on all of the forest estate in each lot at the end of the exclusivity period, instead a select list of potential sites will be taken forward and the rest of the land can be open to communities or others to take forward if possible.

In March 2010 I announced £100,000 in support of the Community Wellbeing Champions Initiative. So far the Initiative has been piloted in five areas across Scotland: Fife; Shetland; North Lanarkshire; South Lanarkshire, and Stirling.

Evaluation of these pilots is currently taking place, and a full report of the Initiative will be included in the second annual report to Parliament.

Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) has responsibility for the development of the national forest estate and it would not have been appropriate to directly involve communities in the commercial process. However, FCS did discuss with representative community bodies such as Community Energy Scotland, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Scottish Community Woodlands and others during the process and endeavoured to obtain a good outcome for communities.

Yes, and the deals announced provide for Forestry Commission Scotland to become a joint venture partner in specific schemes should they chose to do so.

The project Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) undertook with Atkins Consultants had the main objective to build a GIS based analytical model to enable FCS to assess potential wind resource on the national forest estate. This objective was achieved and FCS routinely uses this to assess the potential of various forest blocks for different reasons. Atkins also ran the model as a part of the exercise and produced a report covering the NFE as part of the deliverables of the project. This, along with the analytical model was handed over to FCS in September 2008. Any report like this has its limitations and the main project output was the working model however, the report did provide the necessary confidence that there remained a reasonably significant wind energy resource on the NFE and that therefore it would be worth pursuing its development strategically. FCS has had no requests to release the report but would be happy to publish it on their website if required.

It will only be possible to say which communities will benefit once the developers have identified potential sites on the national forest estate. It is expected that this process will take up to eight month to complete.

Every exercise like this is heavy on resource and time. Progressing these opportunities will contribute significantly to the delivery of the Government''s renewable energy targets and generate an additional revenue stream for Forestry Commission Scotland which will avoid the need for taxpayers to support the cost of delivery of social and environmental outputs from the national forest estate.

Forestry Commission Scotland has secured leading edge community benefits of up to £5,000 per mw per annum for both wind and hydro developments. Communities, if they so wish, will be able to invest this payment in a share of the development. Also, they have the choice to add extra cash of their own to build a greater stake for the community.

We estimate that this new programme could generate up to 500mw per annum and if this is realised then it could mean a windfall of £2.5 million per annum for communities.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-39697 on 14 March 2011. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

Marine Scotland has undertaken and issued regional locational guidance to help inform the future selection of sites. This guidance contains relevant information including, for example, information on environmental sensitivities, other marine users and the socio-economic structure of the area/region and sits within the wider marine planning structure being developed by Marine Scotland.

The regional locational guidance is informed by Marine Scotland''s on-going work including our programme of seabed mapping. This programme has acquired bathymetric data to get a more detailed understanding of the depth and shape of the surface of the seabed, as well as its character (i.e. rock, sand, mud, boulders etc.) than that previously available. This information has been made public in order to help inform the future selection of sites for offshore renewable energy developments.

The Scottish Government''s research programme and demonstration strategy will also provide information which can be used to inform regional locational guidance and the licensing process where appropriate.