Community Funds from Wind Farm

Airtricity, a renewables firm, completed its first Northern Ireland 13 turbine wind farm at Tappaghan Mountain in Co Fermanagh in March 2005.

This marks the beginning of the company’s £500m investment programme in NI renewable energy projects.

The 19.5 MW wind farm at Tappaghan will provide enough electricity for 57% of the domestic demand of the population of Fermanagh District Council.

As part of the current development Airtricity has established the Tappaghan Community Fund.  The company will pay £260,000 over the lifetime of the project- with the local community directly benefiting from £13,000 per annum being invested in local community schemes (for both projects directly relating to sustainability and unrelated initiatives).

This forms part of a process of building effective dialogue between stakeholders and the developers.

This is a model that could be used for large-scale developers and energy companies in creating effective community engagement - community funds have been set up on a number of wind developments throughout the UK.