Awel Aman Tawe has announced it has appointed three new staff to key roles within the charity – Felicity Crump will be its Deputy Manager, supporting the finance and admin team; Jen James has joined as Education Officer and will be working with schools with Egni Co-op solar panels to help further reduce their carbon emissions; and Emma Norman will be working as Engagement and Community Transport Officer for the Hwb y Gors project.
Felicity said “I’m very excited to be starting and to see the way that so many people are already supporting us – we have over 1,000 members in Awel and Egni Co-ops and have raised over £15m to fund renewable energy installs in the past few years. It’s been a huge expansion and my role is to consolidate that growth, and plan for the future.
Emma said “I’m going to working with the community, schools/colleges and artists on our new flagship project, Hwb y Gors. This is a redevelopment of the former Cwmgors Primary into a zero carbon education, arts and enterprise centre. We have contractors on site at the moment who are working hard. The building has been completely stripped out and we installed a new floor yesterday! It’s a short walk upto our community wind farm Awel Co-op – there’s a public footpath straight there onto the Common so we hope people visit our turbines. Over 1,000 people already have. Emily, who’s behind all our designs for Awel and Egni has done this image below to celebrate Community Energy Fortnight”
Chair of Trustees, Mary Ann Brocklesby said “We are delighted to welcome Felicity, Jen and Emma to our team. One of the aims of our charity is to create new jobs in the Valleys. We’ve already had a renewable energy powered boost from our new staff!
We also want to acknowledge the support of our two funders, the Welsh Government Rural Communities – Rural Development Programme 2014-2020, which is funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Welsh Government. Our second funder is the Third Sector Resilience Fund for Wales Phase 2 Scheme, managed and administered by WCVA on behalf of Welsh Government.”
About Awel Aman Tawe and Egni
Awel Aman Tawe is a charity which has set up two co-ops, Awel and Egni Co-ops. Egni has installed 4.3 MWp of rooftop solar on 88 schools, community buildings and businesses across Wales, making it the largest rooftop solar co-op in the UK 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.
Here’s a recent film made by double BAFTA Cymru winner, Mike Harrison about the largest rooftop solar project in Wales on the Geraint Thomas National Velodrome in Newport https://youtu.be/ZC80dcRmla0
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.