Earthmill aims for UK record as it crowd-funds for wind power scheme

WETHERBY-BASED Earthmill is bidding to set a record for crowd-funded investment into wind power after launching a plan to raise £2.5m.

The wind turbine business, which successfully raised £1.25m from crowd-funding in eight weeks last year, has doubled the size of its ambitions this time around.

Steve Milner, managing director of Earthmill, said: “We were obviously pleased with the take up of the initial fundraising and decided that, in the current climate of expensive bank lending, crowd funding in green tech and renewables made sense again.

“There is an appetite among investors for debt returns underpinned by these existing and highly productive assets, and this will help us drive further growth and fund 10 new turbine installations across the UK.”

If successful, and the company is extremely confident it will be, it will become the largest wind power crowd funded investment in the UK, and also be not far behind the £3.1m raised for a solar power project in Scotland last autumn.

The fund has been launched by renewable energy crowd-funding platform Trillion Fund. Investments start from £50 and loans will be secured against 10 already operational farm-scale turbines, including sites in Keighley, Driffield and Wetwang.

Earthmill has installed more than 200 small-scale wind turbines on farms across the UK.

Mr Milner added: “There is a growing recognition that the medium-scale individual wind turbines being installed by farmers are a positive addition to the landscape. Not only are they built on a more human scale than wind farm turbines but they are adding to the power generated by renewables and reducing the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels.

“Investors who wanted to enter the wind turbine market used to need land, and between £250,000 and £600,000, to buy and install their own turbine. Crowdfunding is a brilliant way of enabling almost anyone who’s interested in wind power to get involved and directly benefit from renewable energy.”

The firm’s latest offering guarantees investors who come on board in the first month an interest rate of 7.5%  per annum over three years, with 7% for those who invest later in the scheme.