After the daily Barton Moss anti-fracking demonstrations, Moss Community Energy was set up by local volunteers, with support from climate change charity 10:10, to try to come up with alternatives.
The aim was to generate clean renewable energy and tackle fuel poverty, and Moss Lane Farm has been earmarked as the first site to install solar panels. However the community benefit company needs to pay for feasibility work, and has been shortlisted in a competition run by the M&S Energy Community Energy Fund to get start-up funding. To win, it needs people to vote online for the project.
"We've been hard at work over the last year setting up the community benefit company and looking for places to put our first solar panels" says Dave Cullen, Secretary of Moss Community Energy "Winning this competition will take us to the level, give us the chance to run a community share offer which will be open to local investors and put rocket boosters on our efforts to tackle fuel poverty and climate change. We really need everybody's help to get as many votes as we can."
Once the solar panels are up and generating electricity, income will go towards repaying investors and into a community benefit fund that will help projects raising awareness of energy and climate change, and support and empower people in fuel poverty to control their energy use.
"What Moss Community Energy are doing is important because they are in an area which has very high levels of fuel poverty, and they are making renewables relevant to everybody" explains Jesse Scharf, Community Energy Campaigner at 10:10 "We hope that the whole community gets behind them and votes for them."
Voting is only open until midnight, September 30th – to vote and see further details of the project click here
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