The Fund
Energy Efficiency Share Match is a new £250k pilot fund in England to support communities raising investment through community shares to pay for energy efficiency measures.
Energy Efficiency Share Match will provide grant funding to match fund money raised from community investors.
Why?
With high fuel and heating costs as well as the climate crisis, communities are seeking ways to decarbonise their operations and reduce running costs. Community shares could be a more affordable way to pay for these measures than loan finance. They will also offer an opportunity to engage your local community in the climate crisis.
What?
Measures could include:
- Installation of new on-site energy or heating technology like solar panels, heat pumps and battery storage
- Installation of new energy efficiency measures in a building like insulation, LED lighting, double glazing, draft-proofing or improved doors
- Improvements to other aspects of operations like changes to more energy efficient equipment or transport upgrade.
Applicants will need be a suitable legal structure to use community shares and need to use the Crowdfunder platform to run their share offer before March 2025. We would hope the measures will lead to a reduction in energy costs and carbon footprint.
Organisations raising investment in community shares for a wider project could be eligible for any energy efficiency measures being installed.
How much?
Energy Efficiency Share Match will provide grant funding to match money raised in community shares. Our grant funding is intended to accelerate the speed and amount you can raise from your community.
We expect most grants to be awarded in the range of £10,000-15,000, with the minimum grant being £5,000 and the default maximum being £30,000.
For organisations in IMD 1-3 areas, and/or led by under-represented groups a maximum grant of £50,000 will be available for those demonstrating exceptional circumstances. The programme will limit the number of organisations receiving a £50,000 grant to two.
We would ordinarily expect to match money raised through the Crowdfunder platform in community shares investments on the basis of 25-33% match of the total raised, up to the maximum grant amounts above.
Priority areas
We welcome interest from all communities. Overall the fund is seeking to particularly reach underrepresented communities and less affluent areas (defined on the Indices of Multiple Deprivation as IMD 1-3).
How to apply
The full application process will open soon on the Crowdfunder website. In the meantime please complete this expression of interest form.
Responses will be held by Crowdfunder and shared with Co-operatives UK and we may get back in touch to discuss more.
Full eligibility criteria
The full criteria can be found here
