Mapledurham Community Energy Public Share Offer

Mapledurham Community Energy Offer

More information is available on www.mapledurham-energy.org

Renewable Energy is a huge opportunity for local communities.  For those of us wanting to ‘do the right thing’ and contribute to a more sustainable planet for our children and grandchildren, we can support local ownership of such projects.  For those of us with some savings for which we wish to find an ethical and high yielding investment, we can take the opportunity to become one of the community owners.

At Mapledurham Estates, planning permission has been granted for an Anaerobic Digester (AD) to be built with a Central Heat and Power (CHP) facility.  The company structure will be a “BennCom” which in effect means that all profits have to be returned to the community.  In the case of the Mapledurham Community Energy BennCom, the communities who can benefit from the profits will be any village or town within a 12 mile radius.  Communities will be able to apply for funds to help with other low energy projects. 

But what is Anaerobic Digestion and Central Heat and Power?  In simple terms this is where the cow manure and crops of maize from the farm get fed into a ‘digester’ and the methane coming out produces heat and energy, which can be converted to electricity and fed into the grid or used on site as heat or electricity.  This is part of the process of making the farm more sustainable.  The Mapledurham Estate has taken a community approach to this and the other benefit of being a “BennCom” organisation is that individuals in the surrounding areas can invest small amounts in the project and get dividends in return.  Every investor (whether £500 or £100,000) will have one vote in the company.  After costs and accruals and those dividends are paid, any further profit is paid into a fund that will be distributed to local communities (as mentioned above) for other sustainable development initiatives.  So this project helps the farm by making it more sustainable in the long term with its dairy herd; it pays the investors a good dividend, and the profits go back to the community to promote community sustainable development projects.

Further information on the share offer to community members will be available at public meetings to be held on: