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North East green project sets up multi £million business CoRE has formed the first UK wide community owned energy supply company which could soon be handling £millions. CoRE has set up the new company to sell energy and provide other financial services to the growing number of community owned renewable energy systems. Its first customer is likely to be a district wood heating system supplying heat to 80 houses and a school in Middleton-in-Teesdale. "Selling energy in today's European wide market is a complex business," said Keith Richardson, Chair of CoRE, "It is a major obstacle to many community owned renewable energy systems as they have to deal with regulators, sell energy and bill customers, trade in Renewable Obligation Certificates and much more" Energy Supply Community Renewable Energy, ESCoRE, will offer a range of other financial services. These include raising finance for community renewables and ultimately offering financial products like leases. But ESCoRE is very different to other commercial Energy Supply Companies (ESCOs). Firstly it is developing its services to meet the needs of communities and secondly, as a social enterprise, it will be owned by these communities and its profits will be used to support more community renewables. It has being incorporated by CoRE, which works in partnership with communities to set up renewable energy systems that it takes a stake in. Thus, as well as being involved in setting up the Middleton district heating scheme it is involved with other renewable energy projects. For example: it has set up a jointly owned company with Berwick Community Trust to set up a wind turbine; it is working with the Linskill Development Trust developing CHP running on recycled cooking oil; in Stamfordham it is working with villagers and farmers to set up a plant to turn manure into electricity and heat. The Berwick wind turbine is expected to be operational within 2 years and it will involve energy sales of £250,000 a year whilst Stamfordham could produce up to £750,000 of energy. With these and a range of other projects, ESCoRE will have a multi million pound turnover within 3 years.
22.9.08
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