Isles of Scilly Smart Islands

The Isles of Scilly offer significant investment opportunity, business potential and training opportunities. From infrastructure improvements to new workspaces and investment the Islands Futures and Smart Islands Projects are addressing the challenges for the islands.

Through the ‘Island Futures’ SEP the following priorities will be delivered through themed action plans:

To secure resilient, year-round transport services to Cornwall and further afield

To improve the quality of the tourism offer

To promote the Isles of Scilly more effectively

To diversify the economy

To create more collaborative opportunities for the islands’ businesses

To make the islands more self-sufficient and more resilient to future changes

To find out more about our business ambition, opportunities, assets and priorities visit scilly.gov.uk

To engage with the Island Partnership and their work with the business community visit islandspartnership.co.uk

Smart Islands programme

The programme targets several of the Islands Futures priorities and has the following goals:

20% reduction in electricity bills by 2020 (40% by 2025)
40% of the isles’ energy demand met through renewable generation by 2025
40% of vehicles being low carbon or electric by 2025
Internships, cultural exchange and STEM* skill delivery for young people
Full programme of energy efficiency measures delivered by 2020.

The current challenges are considerable. Providing affordable and reliable electricity, drinking water, sewage treatment and waste disposal for Scilly’s remote island population is expensive and presents considerable practical challenges. This must all be achieved within the beautiful but sensitive environmental and heritage context of the islands.

There is an exciting opportunity on Scilly to take a fundamentally different approach to waste, water and energy. The ambitious goals of the programme can be achieved by the introduction of a Smart Grid, generating energy from waste, sewerage and a mix of renewable energy sources; unlocking value and savings for Scilly’s residents and businesses through a locally owned Community Energy Services Company.

You can find out more about some of the possibilities that are being explored in the technical survey here.

To find out more about this exciting initiative please contact enquiries@scilly.gov.uk or visit the Smart Islands website here.