Bristol City Council and Bristol Co-operative Energy's The Bottle Yard Studios is one of the first community energy projects to receive support from a brand-new £1.5 million Kickstart initiative.

The state-of-the-art facility is the biggest community-owned solar rooftop array in the West of England and one of the largest of its kind in the UK, consisting of more than 2,000 photovoltaic panels.

Ahead of its opening last December, it received a contribution towards its costs thanks to Younity – Octopus Energy and The Midcounties Co-operative's joint venture – via its Community Energy Kickstart initiative, to help energy groups bridge vital start-up costs for their renewable projects.

Thanks to this funding and additional investment from Bristol Co-operative Energy, the facility was able to triple the size of its solar array from the 283kWp solar array originally planned.

The aim of Younity's £1.5 million Kickstart fund is to streamline the process that comes with traditional and prohibitively expensive financing from banks. It also helps to bridge start-up costs like buying solar panels or wind turbines, helping green power projects created and run for the benefit of the local community quickly scale – so they can generate more cheap green power for their community.

The Kickstart will help unleash the significant potential of Britain's 400+ community energy groups with 319 MW of renewable energy capacity*. Younity already supports around half of these groups and the community energy sector is set to reach 5 GW+ by 2030**.

Andy O'Brien, Co-founder and Director of Bristol Energy Co-operative, added:

"We're really passionate about the positive impact of green power on our community. We're over the moon to have got such affordable access to the funds we needed to build our latest solar community energy project at The Bottle Yard Studios, so we can generate more green energy for our community."

Phil Ponsonby, CEO of The Midcounties Co-operative commented:

"This is a significant step in the right direction to help community energy projects get up and running quicker than ever before. This is all about bridging the funding gap for community energy groups to facilitate renewable power projects and create locally owned sustainable solutions."

Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy Generation commented:

"Community energy projects are vital in bringing more secure, cheap, clean energy closer to communities who'll benefit. Launching this initiative will help unleash the sector's potential and tap into the growing demand for home-grown green power and lower bills."

To qualify for the Kickstart initiative, projects can apply for an advance on funds and once they reach their community share-raising phase, this is paid back to Younity. This allows for a flow of funds for the next waves of the growing community energy movement.

Younity will work with the projects supported by the Community Energy Kickstart to secure Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). This means offering fair pricing to community energy groups, which supports their community benefit funds and local projects like fuel poverty or education. Excess energy is supplied to Co-op Community Power Tariff customers, the UK's only tariff powered by renewable electricity from community projects.

Younity has signed 200 energy supply agreements for community energy groups, across 136 solar sites, 22 wind sites and 42 hydro sites, everywhere from Scotland to Cornwall.