ecobond three offered investors a return of 5.5% per annum (or 6.0% per annum for Ecotricity customers), the company will use the funds raised to build six renewable energy projects already in the first stages of construction – between them they will generate enough green energy to power over 10,000 homes each year.
Ecotricity founder, Dale Vince, said: “This is our third and biggest ecobond yet and it’s quite an incredible outcome given the background we’ve been working in these last few months – the relentless attacks on the renewable energy industry by the new Tory government, which can’t have exactly boosted confidence in the sector. This is a fantastic show of support, from our customers and the wider public.
“When we launched the first ecobond five years ago, it was a fairly radical idea – we wanted to give people the chance to share in the financial benefits of the Green Energy revolution as well as cutting out the banks that generally charge borrowers more than they pay investors.
“ecobond three stays true to that philosophy; it’s about democratising the energy sector and the financial sector at the same time – giving people the chance to join us in our work as well as directly accessing the kind of interest rates that banks charge but don’t pay.
“As the latest UN Climate Change conference gets underway in Paris this week – in an attempt to see whether the world can agree vital steps to prevent two degree temperature rise (and with it catastrophic climate change) – recent policy moves in Britain are hard to fathom and starkly at odds with the rest of the world, where it’s recognised that Renewable Energy is at the heart of climate change abatement.
“Quite what the UK government will say at these talks or what credibility they may have, remains to be seen – having in the last few months shut down Britain’s nascent renewable industry and just introduced new subsidies to encourage the use of more fossil fuels.”