Energyshare launches big community energy fund
By Ed Mitchell 8th March 2011
Since starting their new community energy portal, Energyshare have been moving on in leaps and bounds, and have just announced a funding pot of £500,000.
This is pretty impressive stuff, we think you’ll agree and advise you to have a look. As with all the big funding opportunities, it comes with our gentle health warning (below). Here’s the outline from Energyshare:
We’ve just launched the energyshare fund and have up to £500, 000 initially available to fund renewable energy projects.
We are now calling for communities across the UK to register their interest for the fund. And this is just the beginning. With our founding partners, British Gas, energyshare is committed to distributing a further £3m to community renewable projects over the next 3 years.
energyshare is a 100% renewable energy community, giving everyone in the UK the opportunity to get involved in sourcing, using, and generating your own renewable energy.
Our gentle standard health warning:
For those groups looking at potentially accessing these big pots of money, it’s worth mentioning up front that the effort required just to submit a proposal is likely to a far bigger undertaking than you’re expecting. We’ve talked to other groups who’ve taken this path and their stories are generally not happy. In one instance, where there was lower than a 3% chance of getting a whopping great big £100k+ grant, the food group in one Transition Initiative expended ALL their energy on the bid over a significant period, failed, and completely disbanded in disillusionment. That group would have been far better off doing lots of small visible projects that inspired the local people and attracted more into the group.
We’d much rather see £1million funding go to providing 100 projects with £10k rather than providing £100k to just 10 projects.
At some point, big money will help – it’ll be crucial. But timing is everything, and if your group doesn’t have the expertise, experience and resources to chase these big grants, our advice is to tread warily.