Garve Community Energy

Across the country, local communities are getting together to set up their own community energy schemes. Generally these raise money from a range of sources, including the local community, to install one or more renewable energy systems, and use incentives such as the Feed In Tariff or Renewable Heat Incentive to help them to pay back the investors and to fund other community schemes.

We are looking into the potential to use some of the Lochluichart Community Trust (LCT) funding to kick start a community energy scheme in Garve & District. This could include installing renewable energy such as solar hot water, solar PV, heat pumps or biomass boilers in your property, or it could be a larger community-owned scheme such as a hydro or wind turbine.

It will need to raise finance, which could come from a community energy share offer, or a loan from a social lender specifically designed for this purpose, or a loan from Highland Council, or a combination of these. It could be backed by funding from the LCT.

It will be designed to use the income from the renewable energy schemes, such as the Feed-In-Tariff, to pay back this finance.

Other community energy schemes have raised amounts between a few thousand pounds and several million, and are able to offer a return to investors of 3-6%, and provide money into a community pot for further projects.

At this stage, we are not asking whether you want to invest, or what the scheme should be, but just whether you think it's a good idea to work on. So before we start, we'd like to hear your views. Please could you take 10 minutes to complete this survey - there are 11 questions.

We're also holding a meeting in Garve Village Hall on Wednesday 18th March at 7-9pm to talk about the options in a lot more detail - please come.

Many thanks,

Gill Fenna

APSE Energy