Allt Dearg was shortlisted before in 2011 and 2012 in the "Community Initiative" category, but this is the first time the very successful locally owned wind farm has been short listed in the "Best Project" category.  Allt Dearg won the first Community Project Award from RenewableUK, the national trade body, in June 2012.

After starting full scale generation on Christmas Eve 2012, the Allt Dearg wind farm has been highly productive, with perhaps the highest capacity factor of any 10MW or greater wind farm presently operating in the UK.  The fact that the project has been locally developed with the landowners working in partnership with the neighbouring community of Ardrishaig, is very unusual in the UK wind farm industry.  This model of community based development, which received no public funding, has demonstrated that it can deliver very significant benefits to the host community, with £130,000 having already been earned by the Ardrishaig Trust and another £37,000 being used to support local students via the dedicated Educational Trust.

James Lithgow of Ormsary said: - "We hope these award short listings might highlight that commercial scale renewable energy can be successfully developed from within our remote communities, where the essential energy resources are located.  In a world increasingly dominated by multinational corporations, whose owners and managers are remote from the communities that host their business, we are proud that our neighbours in Ardrishaig can look to the skyline and see the turbines generating the income that the Ardrishaig community are then investing in local projects."