IN the heady days when North Sea oil was gushing at a rapid rate, the small group that had set up a spiritual community on the north-east coast was viewed by many as just a little bit off field.

It was 1982, the year Britain had, for the first time in its history, become an oil exporter, and the Findhorn group had announced it wanted to create a “Planetary Village” – a living example of how people could make sustainable use of the environment around them in an harmonious existence with nature and each other.

The group already stood out from the crowd. Twenty years earlier, husband and wife Eileen and Peter Caddy and their friend, Dorothy Maclean, had arrived with their caravan on the windswept shores of Findhorn Bay on the Moray Firth. The spiritual community became the Findhorn Foundation, dedicated to “planetary service, co-creation with nature and attunement to the divinity within all beings”.

By 1970, numbers had swelled to about 50, with their off-grid way of life attracting some 500 visitors a year. As well as those
seeking spiritual guidance, others were curious to see the odd “eco-homes” that had sprung up like those made from two large empty wooden whisky vats joined together, and others like “hobbit” homes with turf roofs and insulated with straw bales and tyres.

But in 1982, when most Scots were enjoying the benefits of North Sea gas and oil, the idea of a “planetary village” with
talk of harmony with nature, meditation and homegrown vegetables – said to be supersized thanks to being lovingly spoken
to by the growers – and those odd houses,was sneered at by some as a relic of the sixties’ flower power and hippies. These days, though, the community based at The Park, on the fringes of Findhorn with its “The Good Life” vegetable patches, eco-homes and trio of
electricity-producing wind turbines, seems more like futuristic visionaries. Their planetary village concept has come to the fore against a backdrop of a world that has torn through its natural resources. And their gentle approach to living in tune with the world around them using wind power and living in homes designed to be naturally efficient suddenly seems to make sense.

These days, the community remains at the forefront of energy innovation. Its carbon footprint sits at 7.1 tons per person, lower than the UK average of 9.5 tons, and with a target to become carbon neutral by 2030. With the world having caught up with the community’s innovative approach, many residents have already taken the next step and removed oil and bottled gas heating systems in favour of more environmentally-friendly alternatives.

One is Maggie La Tourelle, whose home at the heart of The Park has installed modern heating with air-source heat pump at its heart and an air-to-air system which blows warm air into her room whenever she needs it. Having installed it in her single-storey home, she immediately saw her electricity bills cut in half. Last month’s bill was just £62 but, she says, even that was a little higher than normal.
She can’t recall when her wood burner, a back-up for heat, was last used. “I get angry when people say heat pumps are no good, because that’s not true,” she says. “You have to understand where and how they work best,” she adds. “The reason there are so many
conflicting opinions about air-source heat pumps is not to do with the pumps themselves – it’s to do with the insulation. Mine is incredible.”

Maggie, a natural health care practitioner psychotherapist, arrived at The Park seven years ago for a complete change of lifestyle,
moving from the bustle of London’s Belsize Park, a stone’s throw from Hampstead Heath. The community appealed to her on a
spiritual level but also for its proximity to the sea as she grew up on the Ayrshire coast and yearned to be back beside the
water. It’s pioneering use of renewable energy also made it stand out: a 75kW Vestas wind turbine arrived in late 1988, a time when
the idea of wind energy was regarded as a curiosity. The community called it Moya, meaning spirit, wind and breath of God in the
Sesotho language spoken in the landlocked African mountain kingdom of Lesotho. For 25 years, it served as a constant symbol of
the planetary village and its ecological dreams.

Having generated an estimated 2,346,288kW of electricity and supplied around 8% of the community’s requirements, it was decommissioned in 2015 with three new turbines installed, boosting output from 75kW to 750kW – plenty to cover the community’s needs. However, running Maggie’s wall mounted electric heaters was expensive, and her architect son, who lives in Norway,
offered advice on a more efficient system inspired by life there.

Maggie set about installing the air-source heat pump and, with underfloor heating not an option, added an inverter connected
to an air-to-air heating system. “It’s like when you walk into a big store you can feel the heat on your head,” she adds. “I have three ducts that blow air to the living spaces.” Because the house is airtight, a mechanical ventilation heating retrieval system runs constantly and independent of the heat pump and air-to-air system. It pumps out “old” air from the building and, as fresh air enters, heats it up.
“The lovely thing about air-to-air heating system is I turn up the thermostat and within a second warm air is blowing in and
circulating,” she adds.

Years ahead of its time back at the beginning, nearly 130 ecological buildings have been constructed in The Park at
Findhorn to rigorous ecological standards. Some have gone on to fit solar PV panels, ground-source heat pumps and air-source
heat pump systems similar to Maggie’s. Many of the newer properties are built to Passivhaus standards, making them ultra low energy and highly efficient, with solar features and two-and-a-half times the insulation required by Scottish building regulations.

The community has continued to experiment with innovative, energyefficient construction systems. Some properties feature a “breathing wall” which eliminates the need for a vapour barrier and allows the fabric of the building to interact with the indoor climate.
Meanwhile, the Soillse Eco-village Project is a six-house carbon-neutral, co-housing project within the Findhorn community, with triple-glazed and super insulated homes that feature their own biomass district heating system and compost toilet.

More recently, the East Whins co-housing neighbourhood introduced 20 passive solar design, highly-insulated houses, while the community was among the first to adopt a car pool system – its fleet includes electric vehicles powered by the eco-village’s three windmills. Two years ago, coinciding with the community’s 60th anniversary, it received almost £270,000 from the Scottish
Government’s £500 million Just Transition Fund, set up to support initiatives in the north east and Moray in the transition to
net zero.

The funds are being used to further explore the shift from conventional housing to net zero – putting the village’s
experiences at the centre of the debate over how Scottish homes might make the shift from reliance on gas and oil to cleaner
energy. It fits nicely with the vision of one of the community’s original founders, Eileen Caddy. “You are living in the new where no
books of knowledge have been written, where there is no pattern to follow,” she once said. “There is nothing hard or fast or
cut and dried about this life. You can not tell from one day to the next what is going to happen.This is the most thrilling and
exciting time – whole new vistas keep opening up. The unknown is becoming known.”