Raising £1 million for clean energy projects in Sussex through the power of community investment
Back in June 2015 BHESCo launched our introductory community share offer in the hope of raising enough money to begin work on our first four community energy projects.
Thanks to the belief and forward-thinking attitude of our earliest investors, we were fortunate to meet our fundraising goal and attract enough funding to develop these initial projects.
Since those early days we have continuously grown and developed the business and have now completed fifty community energy projects throughout Sussex, with many more being developed in the pipeline.
In keeping with our founding principles we have delivered all of our projects at no upfront cost to our customers using funds raised from community investors.
As a result of our most recent fundraising drive we are delighted to say that we’ve now raised our first £1 million of investment, marking a significant milestone in the history of our co-operative.
Growing the community energy sector and increasing our impact as new opportunities arise
With a proven track-record of project delivery and a demonstrated ability to deliver on our promise to pay investors 5% interest each year, we expect that our future fund-raising initiatives will become both quicker and easier, enabling BHESCo to expand our impact beyond the boundaries of Sussex.
Furthermore, we know that there is a growing appetite for social impact investment opportunities among the general public as awareness of the climate crisis grows alongside an ever-increasing acceptance that things must not only change, but change rapidly.
The UK Government has committed to a legally binding target of achieving Net Zero Emissions by 2050, which will require an unprecedented upheaval to our energy infrastructure, including a mass programme of energy efficiency upgrades, installing low carbon heating solutions like heat pumps, and establishing microgrids and local energy trading.
We believe we are ideally suited to capitalise on the business opportunities offered by the sustainable energy transition, and we will continue to pursue our successful ‘Pay As You Save’ finance strategy to enable everyone in our community to improve the environmental credentials of their property.
As our energy co-op becomes more established and is taken more seriously by local, regional, and national stakeholders as a credible solution to the climate crisis, we hope to become a source of inspiration and information to other communities who wish to establish their own community energy projects.
As our co-operative continues to develop and expand our range of services there are many ways that you can partner with BHESCo to reduce the environmental impact and financial cost of powering your property. You could even decide to become an investor and support our latest community energy projects.
Our first million pounds of investment has enabled us to develop fifty community owned energy projects which collectively will reduce CO2 emissions by 5,478 tonnes over their operational lifetime; the same environmental impact as avoiding 6,040 flights from London to New York!
We look forward with great expectations to finding out what innovative energy solutions and crucial carbon savings our next million pounds will achieve!
0 Comments