Community energy firm delivers 7 per cent return for investors

Community energy company Big60Million is making its first 7 per cent interest payments to bond holders in its first solar farm.

A year after the launch of the UK’s first climate bond on the company’s 3.8MW Willersey solar farm in Gloucestershire, investors will now earn 7 per cent gross interest every year for five years.

The company said Willersey will provide a model for plans to roll out solar in partnership with communities. The success of the first solar bond offer “demonstrates clear public appetite” for the model, which offers “affordable, secure, quality investments in solar farms”.

David Haslam, an investor in Willersey, said: “The opportunity to invest money in something that is both going to produce energy for people, free, from the sun, and also make a financial return, that’s a positive investment with a double whammy as far as I’m concerned.”

On 1 April, Big60Million announced that it had launched a £20.4 million solar mini-bond portfolio which would give people the opportunity to invest in its 34MW of solar power.

Big60Million chief executive Toddington Harper said: “We have developed a model that will help take community solar to scale across the UK to help accelerate the transition to the low carbon future that we so urgently need.

“Big60Million’s first four solar farms will yield more than £7.5 million in interest for investors in their first five years and produce enough clean energy to power more than 11,000 homes.

“Our ambition is to encourage local people to benefit from the returns available from investing in solar farms, and to help ensure that the solar farms will make a positive impact on their communities, forging links with local people, enabling them to share in the solar farm’s profits, and creating sanctuaries for wildlife and bees on each farm.”