Ecotricity hails green bond issue success

Ecobonds give people the opportunity to share in the financial benefits of green energy projects and serves as a method by which to raise funding. Ecotricity, which was founded by Dale Vince, was seeking £10m of funding from customers and the public to help accelerate the building of new green energy projects such as windmills and green gas.

By the offer deadline of December 16 at 5pm, more than 2,000 people had applied for £16.2m worth of ecobonds, making them oversubscribed by 62 per cent, and exceeding the success of the company’s first ecobond issue last year.

Former New Age traveller Mr Vince said: “We’ve found a way to raise funding that is resonating with the British public and expect to do this annually in order to ramp up the green energy sources that Britain desperately needs.”

Last year, around 2,000 people between them applied for £14.3m worth of ecobonds, making them oversubscribed by 43 per cent.

Ecotricity, which has over 200 employees, submitted a planning application in January for a single wind turbine at brick manufacturer H+H’s factory in Pollington.

The application is for a turbine measuring about 120m from base to tip, with a capacity of 2.3MW, which Stuart Brennan, spokesman for Ecotricity, said would save 2,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. He said there is one objection from Robin Hood Airport over air traffic issues and that Ecotricity is waiting for the airport to respond with expert advice.

Mr Brennan said: “We will be building the windmill and maintaining it and we will sell the electricity to the factory at a reduced rate than what they would normally be paying to get energy from the national grid.”

Ecotricity’s ecobonds were available at a minimum investment of £500 and with an initial term of four years. It offered a preferential rate to its customers – 6.5 per cent as opposed to the 6 per cent for non-customers.

Ecotricity has a number of new green energy projects waiting to be built including 19 windmills with planning approval, plus a further 78 windmills for which it is seeking planning approval, and it has a target of having over 200MW of operational capacity in the next five years. The company expects turnover to hit £52m in the year ending April 2012, compared to £44m in the previous year. Pre-tax profit for the year to April 2011 was £1.7m.

It also intends to increase its investment in other renewable energy technologies, including wave power and green gas made from organic waste. Mr Brennan said: “We have about 56,000 retail customers and that has grown by almost 30 per cent over the past year. We are quite rapidly growing our customer base.”

Established in 1995, Ecotricity operates a ‘not-for-dividend’ model, re-investing the money from customers’ bills back into building more new sources of green energy.

Mr Brennan said: “Over the last seven years, on average, of every £1 made in profit we have put back 82p into renewable energy. This is compared to the industry average of 8p. Our mission is to change where Britain’s energy comes from.”

Ecotricity now supplies green energy to over 55,000 customers from 53 windmills at 17 wind parks, and one sun park, across the UK, which, together, it says, prevents over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere every year.

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