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The new initiative, Community Energy Catalyst, will support local communities to build their own clean energy infrastructure or secure stakes in larger regional renewable energy schemes. Fair Play Clean Energy, Thrive’s existing joint venture with Top Cashback Sustainability Ltd, will provide £20 million of the investment, with Better Society Capital providing matched funding.
Community Energy Catalyst will make investments ranging between £0.5 million to £30 million in individual projects which are at least 1MW in size and employ proven technologies such as onshore and offshore wind, solar PV and hydro-electric. The joint venture will target late-stage development projects that have already secured planning consent, enabling them to advance through to construction, commissioning and operation while aligning with local objectives.
As well as funding, Thrive brings 30 years of experience financing, building and operating clean energy projects in the UK, and will provide support to community energy groups during key milestones such as procurement and grid connection.
When we created our award-winning community funding bridge in 2017, it was the first of its kind. Eight years later we’ve invested over £21 million into seven community energy projects, including £4 million to build England’s largest onshore wind turbine, which is 100% owned by the community in our home city of Bristol.

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Funding partnership with Better Society Capital will help more communities to own their own projects or take a stake in a larger project in their local area.

We’re partnering with the UK’s leading social impact investor to mobilise £40 million for community-owned energy projects

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A senior debt facility of up to £11.4 million has been secured from Santander UK plc (“Santander UK”), with the balance of funding met equally between GreenPower and Thrive.
This will be the first project for either GreenPower or Thrive using GE turbines. The project will generate approximately 20,200 MWh per annum, equivalent to the yearly demand from 5,120 homes*.
* Based on an average UK domestic electricity consumption of 3,938kWh/annum (‘Energy Consumption in the UK’, November 2016, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy)

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Achieving this milestone triggers the commencement of the construction of the wind farm which will commence generation in summer 2017.

£11.4 million project financing for the Drumduff wind farm

Please note the share offer closed on 13 March 2017 and is no longer available. 
Funds raised by the new bond will be put to work straight away to build two new onshore windfarms in Scotland with a combined capacity of 11MW. Once built, these will be able to generate enough electricity for 8720 homes. In addition, funds will support a pipeline project generating solar power.
Thrive currently has a portfolio of 15 operational renewable energy sites, with a third of these in Scotland. Its 21 year track record in investing in projects that result in both financial and environmental benefit, that are small to medium scale, sensitively sited and provide sustainable power to the UK grid. Thrive provides shareholders an efficient and rewarding financial connection with sustainable energy and a role in building the new, smarter energy system.
This was the first unlisted bond to be eligible to be held in the new third ISA: the Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA). Over 50% of the investors in the Thrive bond chose to hold their bonds in an IFISA and will receive their interest tax free.
The speed of the raise shows the significant demand for commercially viable and sustainable investments. Investors could invest online for a minimum of just £5 making this investment widely accessible to everyday investors. A total of 938 people invested, with a third of those existing share or bond holders, meaning Thrive has grown its investor community by some 600 people.
The bond, issued by Thrive Renewables plc on an unsecured basis, will pay 5% gross interest per year with capital repaid in March 2024. Payment of interest and repayment of capital is not guaranteed and is dependent on the continued successful operation of the Thrive business model.
Thrive already generates enough clean electricity to meet the need of over 40,000 homes; the additional projects coming online as a result of this bond will boost that to a further 8,270 homes.
Thrive was advised by Triodos Bank. Its Corporate Finance Team Head Dan Hird said: “This is the fastest capital raise we have ever done. I think it captured people’s interest because of the strong brand and good track record of Thrive as a company, the impact it has as an organisation and the financial return &#8211; coupled with the ability to receive the interest tax free through the ISA.
The corporate finance team of Triodos Bank is acting as adviser to Thrive Renewables and promoter of the offer. Abundance Investment, the regulated peer to peer investment platform, is acting as registrar and facilitator for the bonds and is the IFISA manager.
Thrive Renewables targeted £7.5m for this raise but will issue up to £10m of bonds through this offer. The bond second offer is still open with a minimum subscription amount of £90,000 and a final closing date of 27 February 2017. For more information please contact Triodos Bank on <a href="mailto:investments@triodos.co.uk">investments@triodos.co.uk</a> or 0117 980 9593.

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Thrive Renewables plc (Thrive), one of the UK’s most widely owned independent renewable energy companies, has raised £7.7 million through a bond offer.

Thrive exceeds £7.5 million bond target

With a career in wind energy spanning more than two decades, Colin has seen his fair share of developments including the turbulent beginnings of the 80s Californian wind boom, the building of Europe’s biggest onshore windfarm in 1994, with 103 turbines on a hilltop just outside Newtown in Powys, and to present day, where he leads a multi-national team committed to being part of the solution that drives to take carbon and international politics out of our energy supply.
Colin, a keen cyclist, bypassed the traffic to our Thrive office to spend some time talking about his career, renewables, the importance of time with family, cycling and love of everything that Bristol has to offer.
<h3>Colin, tell us how you got into renewables and specifically wind energy</h3>
“My education went down the traditional engineering route. I’ve been interested in energy since the age of 15 and upon taking a geography O’Level my interest grew in clean energy. By the time I went to university the next step was a degree in Mechanical Engineering in London. Soon after leaving Uni, I happened upon a small start-up in wind energy called Garrad Hassan, and joined them. The move was intended to be temporary, partly to stay and experience London for another year as renewables back then was not considered to be a real career, most of my peers joining aerospace, automotive, accountancy or chemical companies. I ended up staying there 28 years!”
The company grew and ultimately merged into DNV GL, which operates worldwide as one of the leading engineering certification, safety and consultancy businesses. By 2015 Colin was a Senior VP there having held various roles including being globally responsible for the company’s offshore wind business and manager of the 400-strong business unit providing renewables consulting across Western Europe and Latin America. In July 2015 he left with five colleagues to found Everoze, still focused on the remit around clean energy, including wind and solar, but also storage and potentially wider power and energy system issues. Everoze has grown quickly to 25 staff in UK and France, advising investors, developers, operators and policy-makers in renewables and storage; by leveraging their extensive industry network and deep technical understanding.
“It’s nice to be doing engineering again and delivering projects. Our ethical drive is to take carbon out of our energy system, so we’re trying hard to maintain an enjoyable work environment, but we are still making a meaningful impact.” This motivation and ethos has made Colin a successful transformational leader.
<h3>What&#8217;s your experience of how the industry has changed over the years?</h3>
“Back when I started out in 1987, it wasn’t about carbon, people had an awareness of fossil fuels polluting, but climate change was not really on the agenda. It was about sustainability of supply. Wind energy was seen back then as a cottage industry. It began with a flurry of activity in California. Wind farms were manufactured in all sorts of shapes and sizes by a huge range of companies, most of which went bust, but a couple survived and are still here today. This drove a lot of wind energy to be installed, and a lot of painful lessons to be learnt. Some of my earliest work was in understanding those lessons and feeding it into the next phase of the industry which happened in Europe.
The plus point was an injection of interest in wind and investment to get the sector through its early growing pains. By the early 90’s UK, Denmark and Germany had developed a market which supported construction of new wind farms, and there was significant UK-based manufacture going on. However, the UK market waned in the mid 90’s as the Government ‘dash for gas’ policy dominated, which is a major reason why the dominant turbine suppliers today are from Germany and Denmark. It simply took too long to get a reliable market started in the UK. That happened in 2002/3 when the Renewables Obligation support mechanism started. From that point until 2015, the UK provided policy support which was as consistent as anywhere in the world hence why we’ve seen over a decade of massive growth in renewable power on our system at new-build prices which have now pretty much closed the gap on conventional generation options. If we look at the power capacity that is being installed now, renewables is a major player and in many parts of the world, including Europe, dominant.”
<h3>What&#8217;s your prediction for renewables in the energy system?</h3>
“The most exciting development in renewables is the cost coming down and it being a time where renewables are the rational economic choice against conventional generators without any kind of subsidy. Where competition has been introduced new renewable projects have been developed significantly more cheaply signalling that the time is right to move towards a competitive model, where renewables compete with each other and non-renewables. This is happening globally. In the UK we’re currently on the path to a generation mix which is heavily gas based and I’m confident that new onshore wind projects can be cost competitive with new <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle">Combined Cycle Gas Turbines</a> (CCGTs). Large-scale solar PV in the south of the UK is not far behind and energy from offshore wind is also getting sharply cheaper.
CCGT is much cleaner than coal, but still generating carbon. We hear a lot about Carbon Capture and Storage, but that is some way from being commercial. Just as the main market mechanism for onshore wind and solar PV was stalled by the incoming 2015 UK Government, so there is no effective market mechanism at present to trigger new-build of CCGTs. Onshore wind projects being built now are happening because of legacy arrangements. In this context, the decision to go ahead and build Hinckley is an irrelevance (as well as being economically irrational). With old plants being retired from the system, near-term action is needed to keep the lights on from around 2020.
So, while we are in something of a policy vacuum, necessity dictates that the Government must bring forward policies in the next year or so to promote building of further new generation capacity. Provided that economic rationality and the interests of the electricity consumer figure significantly in those policies, they should result in a substantial and potentially dominant proportion of our new generators being renewable. Those renewable generators are most likely to be onshore wind projects in Scotland, because it’s more supportive in terms of planning, windier and has space for larger more cost-effective projects than in England and Wales.
But crucially, we are at the point where national policy to build renewables stops being a fluffy environmental decision that needs subsidy support – it is the low cost option for the consumer.
And what about when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? My view of a future system is a move towards wind increasing onshore and offshore, with more solar in the South, increased electrical interconnection with Europe, a lot more storage plant distributed around the country and more flexible control of demand &#8211; having more active control of our consumption – identifying what power can be turned off safely and without the consumer even noticing.”
<h3>What will people think in the future when we look back at all this?</h3>
“Coming from a situation where as a nation we have used a few large remote power stations to power the grid for over 100 years, it has disconnected people entirely from where they get their electricity. Most people have no idea of how our electricity system works. Go back a few generations, what were the first things people did in the morning – find water, find fuel, find food – how many people today think about how to get their fuel? We’ve had to make no compromises in our lives to make that happen other than paying the bills. In the future if we want clean cost-effective power, we have to accept the compromise that the source of that power is not invisible. So in the future I’d like to think that renewable energy will be as widely accepted in our environment as the entirely man-made agricultural landscape is today. It is essential that renewables win that social acceptance, which will be by being good neighbours, by education and by people having ownership. That ownership may be real, as Thrive offers, or it may be the kind that people feel towards familiar features – like the Victorian mill you always passed by on the way to school.
People will also wonder why we were so profligate in how we used energy, so improving efficiency is non-negotiable and the stakes are increasing. We’ve got a future in which it is likely transport and heat will be electrified. We’re already at 25% of electricity being generated from renewables in UK, which is great, but as we electrify the wider energy system in the long-term our electricity demand can only go up. That’s why there is such a pressing need to sort out electricity generation – to break the link between electricity and carbon dioxide production and to do so without increasing the cost to the consumer.
So we know where we need to get to and it’s about getting there as fast as we can. We’ll need technology development, cost reduction and social acceptance, but there’s every reason to be optimistic.”
<h3> About Colin Morgan</h3>
<ul>
<li>Chartered Mechanical Engineer with over 29 years in the wind energy industry,</li>
<li>Non-Executive Director of Thrive Renewables PLC since 2013, sitting on the Operations Health &amp; Safety Sub-Committee</li>
<li>Senior VP / Regional Manager for DNV GL (Western Europe &amp; Latin America ), 2013-2015, one of the largest, most respected, renewable advisory teams in the world;</li>
<li>Global Head of Offshore Wind for the GL Group 2011-2013;</li>
<li>Chaired Renewable UK Onshore Wind Cost Reduction Task-force 2014/15.</li>
</ul>
Founder of <a href="http://everoze.com/">Everoze</a> (2015) &#8211; a business committed to being part of the solution as they drive to take carbon and international politics out of our energy supply. Client-focused technical experts across the renewable energy sector.

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Introducing Colin Morgan, founder of Everoze, wind-energy pioneer and Thrive board member.

Team profile: Wind energy pioneer, Colin Morgan

Following our investment in Gevens wind farm in December 2015, the 6.9 MW project in Fife, Scotland has now begun delivering renewable electricity.  The procurement of a further wind farm in Scotland is also progressing well.
We hope that you like the new format of the half year report.  In response to your feedback we have introduced an easier to read layout for the report and on our website. The report also includes recent feedback from our shareholders and the local community who attended our successful wind farm open day at Ransonmoor Farm in Cambridgeshire.

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TIDE &amp; ISE 2018

We are pleased to present the 2016 Half Year Report with an update on the Company’s operational and financial performance to 30 June 2016.

2016 half year report

Our website address has changed from triodosrenewables.co.uk to www.thriverenewables.co.uk
The underlying company, our renewable projects and team remain the same and we continue to maintain our core values and principles. Our aim for the new website is to provide an even better user experience for our visitors and shareholders. This includes improvements to the layout so you can find your way around the site more easily.
We have now launched the first part of the website with a view to fully completing the site by the end of September. If you have any queries or require further information, please do contact us directly. 
We welcome your feedback to <a href="mailto:info@thriverenewables.co.uk">info@thriverenewables.co.uk</a> and hope you enjoy the new look and feel of the Thrive Renewables website.

As part our move to Thrive Renewables, we have redeveloped and launched a new website.

Our new website goes live

Within the first week of going live to existing shareholders, the offer had received almost half of its funding target. The bond had a £250 minimum investment with 5.5% annual return over a five year period and appeared to be warmly welcomed by the investor community. The investment was secured against two existing and generating wind farms in Strichen, Scotland, and as part of its community initiatives, Thrive Renewables made the bond available to the local public as part of the pre-general release.
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Thrive Renewables has a strong investor community which now includes 418 bond holders, of which 100 with an average investment of £6,900 per holder. Investors were drawn from all areas and ages ranging from 24 to 90 years showing the diversity of Thrive Renewables’ community. Despite the withdraw of Government subsidies for renewable energy, the success of this bond offer is testament to Thrive Renewables’ approach of investing in solid portfolios honed over a 20 year history.
Building on the success of Thrive’s recently published annual results, 2015 has been a record-breaking year for the company, with a 16% growth in investor numbers and revenue was up 22% to £15 million. Generation capacity also rose to 169,485 MWh of renewable energy with increased impact equivalent to 72,876 tonnes of CO2 saved (up 26% on last year).
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Investors have demonstrated their confidence in renewable energy by embracing Thrive Renewables group’s first ever bond offer which closed in record time.

Thrive's first bond offer completed in just under four weeks

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There had previously been a barn owl box on the site, installed on Wessex Water’s pumping station by the Hawk and Owl Trust many years ago. The pumping station is situated right next to one of the wind turbines so, before building work began this box, plus others at the site, were moved to a new location about 400 metres from the wind turbine.
Barn owls were known to use the existing box for breeding prior to the construction of the turbines but have not been recorded breeding on site since the boxes were relocated and the turbines built. The Landmark Practice, who monitor the ecology of the site on behalf of Thrive Renewables, were therefore pleased to find two owlets last month, which are thought to have hatched around the beginning of June. The owlets, which are now seven to eight weeks old, will be competent fliers at around ten weeks old, but will remain close to the nest box until they disperse at around 13 weeks old.
The planning process for the turbines was heavily influenced by wildlife at and around the site. The scheme therefore included measures designed to ensure that there was minimal impact was caused by the addition of the wind farm. This latest development shows that the measures taken have sustained the existing wildlife interest at the site, providing the sensitive conditions needed by barn owls to breed.
Despite the urban setting, the Avonmouth site is a stronghold for wildlife, with rough, grassland areas which are perfect for owls and their prey, including small rodents like voles. While barn owls are traditionally associated with farmland, they are equally suited to brownfield sites as long as they have access to good quality foraging and resting habitat.
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Barn Owls have nested this summer in an owl box situated at our industrial site at Avonmouth. 

We have barn owl chicks at Avonmouth

With a strong 20 year history behind us and having built a trusted and established portfolio of projects driven by sustainability, the fundamentals remain, and are now more important than ever.
The outlook for Thrive Renewables remains positive. Our rationale for this:
<ul>
<li>As one of the leading proponents of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), the UK has set national greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in law.</li>
<li>The weak pound will increase the cost of imported energy prices making renewables more competitive and home grown energy all the more valuable. This moves us closer to a level playing field for renewables making the security of supply a stronger case for the future.</li>
<li>The majority of our debt has fixed interest rates, thereby mitigating exposure to any increased volatility in interest rates.</li>
</ul>
2015 was a record-breaking year of renewable generation for Thrive Renewables with strong growth in our community of shareholders (up 16% in the year to 5,700). Revenue is up 22% to £15m achieving pre-tax profit of £2.3m. In addition, we have just completed our very successful 5.5% bond offer which completed in just under four weeks, connecting more people with renewable energy and releasing capital for growth.
Whilst there is uncertainty in the market, Thrive Renewables shall continue to generate sustainable electricity 365 days a year, rain and shine.

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The wind still blows and the rain continues to fall…

Brexit will not change the weather

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With the addition of three new wind projects, combined with good wind resources in 2015, this allowed Thrive Renewables’ to generate a total of 169,485MWh of renewable energy,  26% more than the 134,480MWh generated in 2014.
The 2015 generation is equivalent to satisfying the electricity demand of 41,187  UK homes (32,080: 2014).
<h2>2015 highlights</h2>
<ul>
<li>169, 485MWh &#8211; the amount of green energy we generated</li>
<li>41,187 &#8211;  number of equivalent UK homes powered from our wind farms</li>
<li>3 &#8211; new projects built (two in Aberdeenshire (100% ownership) and Boardinghouse (75% ownership)</li>
<li>£14,000 – donations for energy improvements in community buildings and community funding at Wern Ddu site supporting local initiatives</li>
<li>12.83 tonnes CO2 – saved per year by an average shareholder (based on 3,800 shares)</li>
<li>15% &#8211; growth in our shareholder base</li>
<li>7 &#8211; homes powered with renewable electricity by every shareholder</li>
</ul>
<h2>Operational highlights</h2>
<ul>
<li>The company’s operational generating capacity grew by 17%, from 54.8MW in 2014 to 64.1MW in 2015.</li>
<li>The energisation of Boardinghouse, Auchtygills and Clayfords added 11.85MW (9.3MW when adjusted for Thrive’s ownership) to the portfolio.</li>
<li>Additionally, in November 2015 the Thrive Renewables provided a £2.7m mezzanine debt facility to Renewable Energy Ventures (Gevens) Limited. The £2.7m facility bridges a funding gap, allowing the developer to continue to own and realise the three turbine 6.9MW wind project located in Fife, Scotland. The project’s construction is on schedule and due to commence operations in autumn 2016.</li>
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It’s been a record-breaking year of renewable generation with strong growth in our community of shareholders (up 16% in the year to 5,700).

Results for year end 2015

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<h3>How long have you been with Thrive Renewables and what is your role on the board?</h3>
I’ve been a Non-Executive Director for three years now. My responsibility, along with the other non-executive directors, is to work closely with the executive team providing objective advice and opinion when required. With a background in Socially Responsible Investment (SRI), together with strategic marketing advice, I bring my experience of marketing and communicating environmental and social impact to the Board, and view Thrive’s development and growth through this lens.
<h3>What is your day job and how do you implement the skills from this into your role with Thrive?</h3>
I am currently Director of Responsible Investment and Stewardship at CCLA, the largest UK fund manager for SRI. I analyse companies’ environmental and social performance and integrate that into investment analysis – at the moment, for example, I am leading on public health issues.
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There are many aspects of my background that I bring to the table at Thrive, including my six years in strategic marketing which is necessary for a company as big as Thrive. With a huge base of shareholders, our marketing is more significant than for other renewable energy investments.
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Sixteen years ago I persuaded Cazenove Capital to develop an SRI offering and embedded it across the entire investment process. This experience allows me to pick up on what parts of the business are most relevant to ethical and socially responsible investors, and how to utilise that.
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I’ve also got board experience as a trustee of Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and seven years as a board member of UK Sustainable Investment and Finance (UKSIF) – initiating the launch of member services to support the smaller ethical investment houses – so I’ve got lots to draw on in order to help Thrive grow and develop.
<h3>What&#8217;s your favourite aspect of your role and why?</h3>
I greatly enjoy supporting the team and the excellent work they do. In particular, always putting the shareholders first – which is absolutely key to Thrive, and working on improving interaction with our shareholders. As a Non-Executive Director we can often offer new perspectives to the Executive team, so I like to be able to help in that way too.
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<h3>Why did you choose to join Thrive&#8217;s board?</h3>
I had been aware of Triodos Renewables (as Thrive Renewables was) since 2001 – and greatly admired its ambition and the drive of the team behind it. I was particularly drawn to its breadth of appeal and inclusiveness, encouraging anyone to take a stake in renewable energy generation in the UK.  Triodos has established a brand with a great reputation for ethics and Thrive continues to embody them now. It&#8217;s both an exciting and fulfilling time to be a board member of Thrive today.
<h3>What do you think makes Thrive unique?</h3>
The shareholder base. We have almost 6,000 individual shareholders who are passionate about taking a stake in the generation of renewable energy – which makes us unlike anyone else. They are very engaged which means they’re a committed and supportive group of shareholders. They are also concerned about the sustainability of the planet and the need to support the energy business in moving to a more sustainable situation, which is a powerful and important foundation of Thrive Renewables.
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What's it like to be a member of the Thrive Renewables board? In this article we ask Katie Gordon, Non-Executive Director.

Team profile: Katie Gordon, Non-Executive Director

With a range of shares available to purchase, investors were free to bid on as many or few shares as they liked. Bidding closed at 4.30pm and in total 51,842 shares were traded, all at £2.25 per share. This is within 1% of the Directors’ recommended share price and all sellers offering shares at £2.25 or below were cleared.

Building on the success of its inaugural share auction, Thrive Renewables’ latest trading day saw almost 52,000 shares changing hands at a price of £2.25 each.

Share auction continues to Thrive

This is the first share auction of its kind for Triodos Renewables, and the company hopes to conduct monthly auctions to enable shareholders to manage their stake in the business at regular intervals.
The auction received considerable interest, and after bidding closed at 16.30pm, 58,525 shares were traded this month at an average price of 198.55p per share. All sellers who offered their shares at 185p or lower sold their shares in full, and sellers who offered their shares at 190p sold part of their holding. Likewise anyone who bid 190p or higher for shares was also successful with their bids. Shares that went unsold on this occasion will now roll forward to the March auction, and will be offered on the same basis.

This was the first share auction of its kind for Triodos Renewables.

First share auction success

The contract awarded to Exergy will include the design and engineering of the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system for converting heat to electricity. As innovators in the global ORC industry, Exergy will use their Radical Outflow Turbine, a highly efficient technology which will produce electricity from the heat of the geothermal fluid. The use of a closed loop cycle will ensure the environmental and visual impact of the system is minimal.  
The site is due to start producing renewable electricity by late 2024 as well as zero carbon heat which could be used to power a nearby housing development at Langarth Garden Village. Once operational, GEL estimates this project will save more than 6,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year compared to fossil fuel power generation.

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The United Downs site is due to start producing up to 3MWe of renewable energy by late 2024.

Contract signed for construction of UK's first deep geothermal power plant

According to the report, UK greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 46 per cent from 1990 levels, but we still have a long way to go – especially after former prime minister Boris Johnson’s COP26 commitment to reduce emissions by 68 per cent by 2030. The CCC has stated that, to hit that target, the current rate of annual emissions reductions (outside of the electricity supply sector) would need to quadruple.  
<h3>What else did the report say? </h3>
The CCC includes various recommendations for how the government could get back on track with net zero. In addition to taking the necessary action to regain its green leadership, it included the need to make important changes to planning policy. It says: “Planning policy needs radical reform to support Net Zero. The planning system must have an overarching requirement that all planning decisions must be taken giving full regard to the imperative of Net Zero.” 
To us, this should include significant planning reform for proven technologies that are cheap, clean and we know will deliver – like onshore wind. <a href="https://twitter.com/DrSimEvans/status/1675853160999448578" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Recent analysis from Carbon Brief</a> found that the UK’s net gas imports would have been 8% lower in Q1 2023 if onshore wind farms had been built at previous rates, instead of grinding to a halt.
<h3>What&#8217;s going on with onshore wind?  </h3>
In 2015, the government made significant changes to onshore wind planning policy in England, making it almost impossible to build new wind farms and resulting in just a small handful of projects being commissioned in the years that followed. For example, the Ambition Community Energy turbine in Bristol (which Thrive funded the construction of) is the only onshore wind project built so far in England in 2023. In fact, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/28/ukraine-built-more-onshore-wind-turbines-last-year-than-england" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ukraine has built more onshore wind turbine</a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/28/ukraine-built-more-onshore-wind-turbines-last-year-than-england" target="_blank" rel="noopener">s</a> in the past year than England has.  
With energy prices skyrocketing over the past 18 months, the issues surrounding onshore wind planning policy have been brought to the forefront, with MPs and the industry recognising the role it could have in reducing bills and accelerating the transition. Following various campaigns, the government launched a technical consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework in December 2022, closing in March 2023. While we were hoping for clarification as part of the government’s “green day” announcements, it instead announced that it would be consulting on how to improve community engagement in relation to building new onshore wind sites.  
We have now formally responded to the consultation and expressed our concerns that changing policy pertaining to community engagement will have minimal impact without a change to the current planning rules in England. We have therefore urged the government in both consultations to remove footnote 54 of the National Planning Policy Framework so onshore wind is treated the same as other infrastructure projects in planning decisions. 
The consultation was based on the premise that developers should have to proactively demonstrate local support – but according to the government’s own figures, only 12% oppose a wind farm in their community. Defining in policy what local support is will be challenging, expensive, subjective and, based on polling, unnecessary. What we need to see is a level playing field in planning policy where onshore wind is treated exactly the same as other local developments like retail, housing or industrial premises.  
<h3>How are we moving forwards? </h3>
We already have the technology we need to decarbonise electricity generation – it’s just about making the most of it. <a href="https://www.businessgreen.com/news-analysis/4119769/national-grid-eso-action-uk-track-net-zero-2046" target="_blank" rel="noopener">According to National Grid ESO’s recent Future Energy Scenarios assessment</a>, the UK could achieve net zero by 2050, or even 2046, if fresh policy measures are adopted to accelerate the roll out of these technologies.  
Although a wakeup call for the government, the CCC’s report also makes it clear that the UK can regain its climate leadership if the right action is taken. This includes continued investment into clean technologies, which is currently reaching record levels. A <a href="https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-low-carbon-energy-technology-investment-surges-past-1-trillion-for-the-first-time/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report from BloombergNEF</a> found that global investment in the energy transition totalled $1.1 trillion in 2022 – a huge increase on the year before – and renewables received a new record of $495 billion in investment, up 17% on 2021. 
We’re proud to have funded the construction of England’s only new onshore wind turbine in 2023 so far, and we’re investing in other critical technologies like solar, battery storage and renewable heat. This will not only support the UK’s transition to net zero but ensure people can enjoy the benefits of clean energy – including cheaper bills – in the years to come.

thrive-renewables-2

Thrive Renewables

Following a recent report from the Climate Change Committee, we give our thoughts on the state of the energy transition in the UK, including the government’s consultation into ‘community engagement’ around onshore wind.

The UK has lost its net zero leadership - So why are we still stalling on proven technologies like onshore wind?

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Now aptly named the ‘UK Green Business Awards’, several new categories have been introduced to celebrate the changing face of British business. Hosted in the Leonardo Royal Hotel in St Paul’s, London, opening speeches from BusinessGreen editor-in-chief, James Murray, and Shadow Climate Change and Net Zero Secretary, Ed Miliband, were followed by announcement of the winners and highly commended businesses… 
And we’re extremely proud to confirm that we won – and against some very tough competition! Also shortlisted in our category were Coutts, EQ Investors, Foresight Group, Gresham House BSIF strategy, Tribe Impact Capital, Triodos Investment Management, WHEB Asset Management and Church Commissioners for England. Big congratulations to these brilliant businesses for all their work building a fairer and more sustainable future for the generations to come, and to BusinessGreen for an inspirational evening!
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For more information on the awards and the lucky winners on the night, read <a href="https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4119130/uk-green-business-awards-winners-announced">BusinessGreen’s article here.</a>  
 
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