Swindon Council’s pioneering solar bonds – the first by a UK local authority – have attracted more than £700,000 from small investors since their launch five weeks ago.
The amount raised represents 41% of the total amount of £1.8m available to small investors in the scheme, which the council has set up with peer-to-peer investment platform Abundance, a London-based firm that has successfully raised £15m for 16 different projects in the past three years. 
The council will also be investing £3m, with proceeds of the bond offer used to fund construction of the Swindon Community Solar Farm at Wroughton.
The bond offers people living in the Swindon area the chance to earn a bank-beating effective rate of return of 6% over its 20-year term while benefiting from the lower risk by investing alongside Swindon Council.
Investments start from just £5. An early bird bonus of 0.5% for the first five years ends next Monday.
Abundance managing director Bruce Davis said the bonds had been among the most popular investments it had launched.
“We’re really pleased with the enthusiastic response we’ve had from local investors, with over 300 people from the Swindon area opening accounts with us so far.
“It proves there’s a local appetite for investments that offer a benefit for the community as well as a good financial return.”
Swindon Council has advised residents about the investment opportunity through its council-tax leaflet, which has recently been delivered to most of the households in the town.
President of the Soil Association and Swindon resident Helen Browning said: “You can’t be anything other than enthusiastic when local government starts to take an active interest in green energy, alongside other environmental affairs.
“It’s an urban-based borough council in Swindon, of course, and people like us at the rural margins probably get a little bit forgotten in our efforts to make things a bit more environmentally lovely, which is what we try to do in all our activities.
“But everyone’s got to start somewhere and Swindon’s solar bonds seem like a great way to engage local people with the benefits of renewables.”
The bonds will find a 5MW solar farm on council-owned land at Common Farm near Wroughton which would generate enough electricity to supply the equivalent of 1,200 homes and save around 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
The farm has already received planning approval though the council’s use of special Local Development Orders, which speed up the planning process but still allow full public consultation. Construction work would start this spring if the cabinet gives it the green light.
The site will be developed by Public Power Solutions, a company wholly owned by the council, which has structured the mixture of public sector and community investment to make the scheme financially viable.
A new Community Interest Company (CIC), also wholly owned by the council, would manage the solar farm, which would cost £4.8m to build – £3m from the council’s investment with £1.8m from community investors.
Some 65% of the profits from the solar farm would go towards local community initiatives, with the remainder going to investors and the council.
Along with its expected financial benefits, the solar farm will help Swindon in its aim to install 200MW of renewable capacity by 2020 – enough to meet the equivalent energy requirements of every home in the borough.
A total of 140MW has already been built or is being planned – a record that has put Swindon ahead of most other towns and cities of equivalent size in the UK and earned the council plaudits for its approach to green energy generation.
