BERWICKSHIRE Housing Association (BHA) and its partners Community Energy Scotland (CES) have been highly commended for their new community wind farm at a renewable energy awards ceremony.
‘The Fisherman Three’ wind farm near Cockburnspath in the Scottish Borders is the first in the UK to have been developed by a housing association in order to fund new homes for social rent.
BHA and CES have now been recognised at the British Renewable Energy Awards, where the project was highly commended in the Community category.
The wind farm was launched earlier this year. By supplying energy to the National Grid, BHA said it will create enough revenue over the next 25 years to allow them to build 500 new homes.
Helen Forsyth, chief executive of Berwickshire Housing Association said, “Renewable energy is something that is extremely important to us at BHA – it is part of the ethos and attitude of the organisation – so I’m really delighted to have been highly commended at these prestigious awards.
“Innovation is something else that is close to our hearts. The idea for the wind farm came about because we needed to keep building new homes for social rental at a time when funding through traditional channels was in decline. Some outside-the-box thinking eventually led to our wind farm, which will provide us with a steady, predictable source of income to allow us to build much-needed new homes, and has the added bonus of reducing carbon emissions. The wind farm is not our only application of renewable energy; we are also in the process of fitting 700 of our homes with PV solar panels.”
