Financing Community Energy Case Studies : Green Energy Mull

Financing Grassroots Innovation Diffusion Pathways: The Case of UK Community Energy

“…These are described as "ethically focussed" lenders (I12), who concentrate investment in projects with clear ethical and/or environmental goals. Importantly however, our case studies of BHESCo (Cairns et al, 2020a) and Green Energy Mull (Cairns et al, 2020c) revealed how these ethical investors shared a similar appetite for scale compared to the larger institutional lenders: "we were actually too small for Triodos. They were looking at £2m plus schemes" (I21).…”

“…• Brighton and Hove Energy Services Company (BHESCo) (Cairns et al, 2020a); • Edinburgh Community Solar Cooperative (ECSC) (Cairns et al, 2020b); • Green Energy Mull (GEM) (Cairns et al, 2020c); and • Gwent Energy CIC (Cairns et al, 2020d) Fourthly, we undertook a case study of the community energy intermediary Energy4All to illustrate collective diffusion (Section 5.4). This built upon the interviews and documentary evidence cited above, plus an analysis of 32 CE share offers that have raised £34.5m since 1997, spread across 29 discrete energy projects and 18 cooperatives.…”

“…Taking the example of GEM and the finance needed to deliver its 400 kW run of river hydro scheme, it accessed a £434,000 fixedrate loan from the Scottish Government via its Energy Investment Fund (EIF) at 7% interest but also secured a cheaper £500,000 variable rate loan from the ethical lender Charity Bank at 5.25% (Cairns et al, 2020c).…”

“…2). In Scotland, for example, the Scottish Government-backed Energy Investment Fund operates as a secondary lender to supply small sums of capital and de-risk investment for private banks (Cairns et al, 2020c). Conversely, smaller scale projects receive limited finance support from the UK government.…”