Grants for Commercial Solar in Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland businesses can make applications to the Energy Efficiency Capital Grant. This £20m fund was launched on the 8th of May 2024 to help Northern Ireland businesses reduce energy costs and build resilience. It will be available for five years or until all the money is dispersed.
This scheme will fund up to £150k per project covering between 30% to 50% of a scheme depending on the size of the business.
The Energy Efficiency Capital grant is administered by Invest Northern Ireland and applications can be made via their web site.
For an overview of the main sources of grants available across the United Kingdom and our thoughts on applications see our guide to grants for commercial solar.
The Energy Efficiency Captial Grant
The aim of the Energy Efficiency Capital Grant (EECG) is to encourage businesses to reduce energy consumption costs and carbon emissions by installing equipment that will result in energy efficiency and carbon savings.
Grants are awarded on a first come first serve basis.
Who can apply?
EECG’s are available to direct users of electricity (i.e. not landlords) who are registered businesses trading in Northern Ireland and who have been operating for at least two years. Sports clubs, farms charities and similar organisations are not eligble.
The site where the project is to be implemented cannot be a new build and must be registered for business rates and owned by the business or have a rental agreement in place for longer than the payback period of the scheme.
A group of companies can only make one application at a time (and two in the five-year period in total) although they can include up to three projects at one business address in each application.
What is funded?
Renewables projects include Solar PV and Battery Storage equipment.
To eligible the submission must be made before a project is started. The project must be at least £4,000 ex VAT and you must be able to fully implement the project (including paying for it full!) before receiving the EECG money. The EECG is a reimbursement grant and so only paid after the project has been fully paid for.
Each project must also meet, and economic payback goal and energy and carbon savings targets based on historical energy consumption. Renewable energy projects must have a payback period within 8 years if they achieve carbon savings of greater than 10% of the current carbon generation or within 10 years if they achieve carbon savings of greater than 50%.
In our judgement nearly every well sized and designed project will meet these criteria.
How much can be funded?
The maximum size of grant depends on of the size of the company applying for the grant.
Small companies (< 50 employees and balance sheet / turnover < 10m can apply for up to 50% of the eligible project costs up to £150k
Medium companies (less than 250 employees, turnover <50m balance sheet <43m) can apply for up to 40% of the eligible project costs up to £150k
Large companies (anything that is not small or medium) can apply for up to 30% of the eligible project costs up to £150k.
Funding the remainder of the project
Grants cannot be used for projects where finance is secured on the equipment. This rule out making use of the common equipment leasing or hire purchase agreements that are typically used to fund Solar PV schemes.
Given the prospectus of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund which funds the scheme sets out in section 7.4 that the schemes that it funds should maximise other funding sources this is a disappointing provision as it rules out the cheapest sources of funds for funding the balance of the project.
Companies are permitted to use company funds, or other unsecured lending and GreenHearth can support you with the analysis to raise this money and introductions to unsecured lenders who will look at this type of investment.
In situations where a business is not able to / or does not want to fund the balance of a scheme from its own resources we can source long dated secured funding with the aim of ensuring year one savings from the proposed scheme.
How to apply
The application process is started by completing the “check your eligibility” questions on the Invest Northern Ireland energy efficiency capital grant site and then filling in a contact form. We are hearing that the response time is at least the 30 days that they indicate in this form.
Invest NI publish detailed guidance notes for applications
The also publish a useful FAQ document
Both of these documents are helpful when completing the application process.
Support for applications
Free Technical Consultancy support for applications is available through Invest NI’s Energy and Resource Efficiency team. This support can help identify projects and provide the information required to support an EECG application.
Invest NI encourages businesses to make use of this service before applying.
In Conclusion
Northern Ireland has one of the more generous and well funded of any of the schemes currently available in the UK. Anecdotally we hear that the pace of applications has been very high and InvestNI have indicated that preference will be given to applications for projects that can be completed by March 2025.
In our view the impact of the scheme is reduced by not permitting the balance of the scheme to be funded using the common HP structure.
GreenHearth can support the analysis necessary for grant applications, assist if securing unsecured financing for the balance of project costs and introduce long term asset finance for the scheme which can serve as an alternative to grant funding if it is necessary to find a funding solution for 100% of the system costs.