£90m investment in UK green energy market

Specialist energy from waste funder Privilege Finance has announced £90 million (€100 million) of investment to fund 14MW of new green energy projects so far in 2019, enough to power approximately 28,000 homes.

Once built and running at full capacity, these projects will be converting 175,000 tonnes of food waste which would otherwise have ended up in landfill, as well as agricultural wastes, into green gas for the National Grid.

Chris Winward, commercial director at Privilege Finance, explains that this recent acceleration in investment is linked to government Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) incentives, which offer set tariff payments for biomethane injected into the grid.

“Developers had been waiting to see if RHI would be guaranteed, so there’s been a surge of new projects since the decision to restore tariff guarantee to December 2016 levels. These projects are now required to be built and injecting gas into the grid by January 2021. As current legislation means that the RHI tariff guarantee will eventually be phased out, we’re ensuring future sustainability for the AD sector by moving beyond tariffs and looking for innovative projects that will generate income through alternative means, such as gate fees,” says Winward.

With 11 projects currently in build, it is an exciting time for Privilege, as the company diversifies into funding these new technologies.

“Our extensive experience of working with the waste industry through AD is enabling us to diversify our lending portfolio into other areas of energy from waste. As a result, the business is growing, we’ve recently moved to new offices and we’re recruiting to up-scale our business development, operational support and back office teams,” Winward adds.