Funding our growth ambitions

We were pleased to announce a new joint venture with TopCashback Sustainability Ltd that will unlock up to £40 million in additional capital. Deployed collaboratively alongside Thrive’s own capital over four years, this partnership will help us contribute to the next phase of the UK’s transition and supports our own ambitious growth strategy. We are  finalising debt arrangements which will inject a further £17 million of funding into the business and, to help us with our goal of doubling our generation capacity within the next five years, we’re also looking to raise capital in early 2025.

The Thrive PLC bond was repaid in March as planned after the conclusion of its seven-year term. The bond offer, which was the first to be available as an Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA), helped fund new projects including a milestone community wind project in Cumbria in 2017.

New diverse projects

We continue to deploy capital into projects that are consistent with our long-term growth strategy, focusing on further diversifying the pipeline so that we can grow our impact and resilience.

So far this year, we have secured a 25-year life extension of our 1MW Beochlich hydro project in the Scottish Highlands and had planning consent granted for an extension of our Drumduff wind farm, which we co-own with local partner GreenPower. The extension will add three turbines with an expected generation capacity of 12-15MW, bringing the overall Drumduff wind farm to six turbines and potentially tripling the combined onsite generation capacity.

We made a £1 million investment in two community owned wind turbines in Gloucestershire and are providing Eden Sustainable with up to £75 million in funding to accelerate the roll out of private wire solar PPA projects for schools, businesses, and other organisations across the UK.

Good progress has been made with construction of the ATTIX CIC wind turbine in Kilbirnie, as well as two ground mount solar projects as part of our partnership with Ethical Power. With generation expected to start in early 2025, significant progress has also been made at the UK’s first deep geothermal production plant in Cornwall, with the turbine that will convert geothermal heat into renewable electricity now successfully installed.

Supporting communities

The final projects from round seven of our voluntary Community Benefit Programme, which provides energy efficiency grants to important shared buildings close to our sites, have now been completed. Nominations for round eight have just closed, with £30,000 in grants to be allocated for local energy saving initiatives across the UK.

We’ve also supported a number of community focused initiatives, including the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE)’s Green Match Fund, which aims to provide more communities with the tools and resources they need to create sustainable, resilient places to live – from improving the energy efficiency of houses and community buildings to preserving natural spaces and setting up social enterprises for community energy. Thrive pledged £5,000 match funding to the appeal, with the final total standing at over £16,000.

It has been great to meet more of our communities in the first half of the year, recently arranging for a local nursery school to visit our Feeder Road battery project in Bristol. The event gave them an opportunity to learn about renewable energy, as well as take part in some themed arts and crafts and nature spotting.