Egni Co-op has announced it has passed the £4m mark for its community share offer. Egni has installed 4.3MWp on 88 sites across Wales including schools, businesses and community buildings.
Co-Director, Dan McCallum, said “We are delighted with the level of public support for our share offer. We now have over 1,000 members. We were also pleased to recently pay 4% interest to our members based on solar generation in 2020 in line with our Share Offer – many chose to re-invest their interest, and invest in more shares – so we have now raised £4.35m.
We’ve raised our final share offer target to £4.6m. This will enable us to repay the final £350k of our loan with the Development Bank of Wales (DBW). Our DBW loan is at 5% interest so we want to refinance so we can put more money into climate change education in schools in Wales. We hope many more people join us – to find out more, visit www.egni.coop ”
Egni members vary from local people who have £50 which is our minimum investment, to charities such as the Environmental Justice Foundation, social enterprises such as Blue Patch and charitable foundations such as Friends Provident who have invested £100k. The key thing is that our members are using what money they can afford to take action on climate change.
All our members can join what promises to be really interesting AGM on June 23rd. We’ll be discussing what we should do next in terms of subsidy free solar installs and discussing the terms of any future Share Offer. We’ll also be reporting on what energy education work we’ve been doing in schools, and future plans. We’re keen to hear from other Welsh local authorities who want to install solar on their schools and other buildings – Newport, Swansea and Pembrokeshire Councils have shown the way as to what can be achieved by working cooperatively with us.
Rosie Gillam, Co-director, added “Across Wales, our solar panels saved our 88 sites £108k in electricity costs in 2020 and over 1,000 tonnes in CO2 emissions. This is important for our smaller community sites such as Cymer Community Library who run many local services including a foodbank; Cwmgors Rugby Club who’ve always been at the heart of the village; and Glynneath Training Centre who run a creche, IT classes and other activities. And our larger sites such as John Frost School in Newport where we have 230kW installed, Morriston Comprehensive in Swansea (100kW) and the largest rooftop solar project in Wales on the Geraint Thomas National Velodrome in Newport https://youtu.be/ZC80dcRmla0 where we have a whopping 500kW!
About Egni
Egni has installed 4.3 MW rooftop solar on 88 schools, community buildings and businesses across Wales. www.egni.coop
All the sites are backed by the Feed in Tariff. Egni is refinancing our loan from the Development Bank of Wales with co-op shares as this is at 5% interest whereas co-op members invest at 4% interest. This means that there is more surplus going into climate change education projects in Welsh schools.
The team behind Egni Co-op have also delivered the award-winning Awel Co-op, a 4.7MW community wind farm which was commissioned in Jan 2017. It was funded by a £5.25m loan from Triodos Bank and a £3m community share offer www.awel.coop.
In 2019, Egni Co-op won Outstanding Renewable Energy Project in an award sponsored by Welsh Government & Awel Aman Tawe was recognised as Environmental Organisation of the Year in the Social Enterprise UK Awards.
For further details of Egni, please contact Dan McCallum 07590 848818
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