Farmer and entrepreneur Maitland Mackie is behind a drive to create a £10m fund to help rural areas benefit from the profits from wind energy.
An influential Scottish Government committee is considering a recommendation for an ambitious initiative which, it is claimed, could generate more than £1bn a year in Scotland - twice the income from farming.
The Community Renewable Implementation Group is giving serious consideration to proposals put forward by Mr Mackie. He says urgency is of the essence before the best wind energy sites are scooped up by multi-national energy companies and rural communities lose the opportunity.
"The project is about delivering the financial benefits of renewable energy production to the rural sector," said Mr Mackie. "Time is not on our side as the development rights of more and more suitable sites are being signed off for a pittance to developers by farmers and landowners who fear the planning risks and start-up costs."
Mr Mackie said he wanted to see grants made available to help local initiatives secure the best advice and get through the "tortuous" planning process which he said was the biggest disincentive to local wind energy development.
Grants paid to groups securing planning permission would be refundable to create a self-financing rolling fund to kick-start future projects.
In a unique show of unity, the initiative has received the backing of all the main organisations with an interest in land use in Scotland, including NFU Scotland, the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association, the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society, the Scottish Agricultural College the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland and Co-operative Development Scotland.
"I am delighted that CRIG is giving the proposal real support and amazed that all the organisations representing the land based industries in Scotland are 100% behind it," Mr Mackie said.
More than a year ago, Mr Mackie shelved plans to set up a national company, Wingen, to develop wind energy from the "top down". But he now believes a "bottom up" approach, based on local community support and investment, is the way forward.
"Wind turbines are much more acceptable if ownership is local and widely spread," he said.
Three wind turbines provide electricity for the Mackie family farm and ice cream factory at Westertown, Rothienorman, with the surplus of 60% being sold to the National grid. Mr Mackie said it was the best investment his family had ever made in his 50 years in business.
He reckons that large-scale land based wind turbines are by far the most cost effective - but not the only - way of generating renewable energy, representing a capital cost of only £3600 per kW compared with £8000 per kW for offshore turbines and £25,000 per kW for small scale turbines generating only 5kW of electricity.
He calculates that a 3mW turbine at a capital cost of £3.6 million will produce an annual income of £437,600 after running costs, giving an 18.2% return on capital. Even if 80% of the original investment is borrowed, the net return is estimated at £365,000 or 10.15%, giving shareholders a 50% return on their investment.
Mackie says the provision of start-up finance could see 3000 locally-owned and widely-dispersed turbines erected over the next 12 years generating three gW of electricity a year (half of Scotland's electricity requirement) and contributing more than £1 billion a year to the rural economy, provided ownership is retained by local communities.