Community energy goes live in Exeter
Exeter Community Energy (ECOE) have announced that they will be launching their inaugural ‘Solar Power Community Share Offer’ on Saturday 7 November.
The share offer will seek to raise around £390,000 to install around 300kWp of rooftop solar panels on a range of community and commercial buildings across Exeter and East Devon.
Solar PV 1 involves ECOE partnering with nine organisations who have confirmed their interest for community-owned solar to be installed on their rooftops. Four sites from this portfolio of roofs will be installed by the end of December 2015, these being Devon County Council’s Exeter Central Library and Great Moor House, plus Wonford Community and Learning Centre and Shillingford Organics.
The Share Offer goes live via the ECOE website and is certified by the Community Share Unit’s Standard Mark for community share offers. There will also be an open Share Launch event held on 17 November in the meeting room of Exeter-based solicitors, Stephens Scown.
ECOE intends to offer investors a return of 5% whilst those investing before 27 November will be eligible to qualify for the government’s EIS Tax Relief of 30%. Income will also be generated for a Community Fund to support local projects targeting fuel poverty and energy efficiency.
ECOE Director, Gill Wyatt, explains: “Community energy is a great investment for anybody interested in combining local, social and environmental benefit with healthy financial returns, not to mention a generous tax relief if you invest in the first 3 weeks of the offer!”
Ben Bradshaw MP is one of the group’s firmest supporters: “I’m excited that ECoE are ready to launch their first portfolio of rooftop solar and fully support their community share offer. I’ll be investing and I hope the people of Exeter can get behind this excellent initiative.”
Despite multiple government-led setbacks - the most recent being an announcement in the past few days that community-energy groups will no longer qualify for the various social investment tax reliefs, despite previous promises to the contrary – community-energy has been the biggest success story of the localism agenda over the past five years.
And ECOE have been working hard to ensure that their efforts do not end with this offer: “When we heard about the government changes to solar industry support in July we became even more motivated to ensure that we could get locally-owned energy up and running in Exeter.”
Gill explains, “Working with partners, we pre-accredited 28 rooftop solar sites for the Feed-In Tariff which gives us a year to install using FiT rates at Sept levels. This means we have in excess of 500kWp of solar capacity available for further share offers in the next 12 months. This is just the beginning!”
ECOE are looking for local investors to invest in this share offer and to spread the word about Exeter’s first community-owned renewable energy project. The minimum investment for anybody living in Exeter and East Devon is just £50. If the offer is over-subscribed, priority will be given to investors from the local area.
To find out more, head to the ECOE website www.ecoe.org.uk
