News

Shropshire and Telford Community Energy (STCE) have announced £24,000 of funding for local community projects, delivered through its Twemlows 2 Fund. The programme follows an earlier £5,000 round of grants released in 2025 via the Twemlows 1 Fund, run in partnership with Community Resource.

Both pots of funding come directly from surpluses generated in 2025 from the Twemlows 10MW Solar Farm,  near Whitchurch. The fund was bolstered further after several shareholders chose to waive their annual interest payments, increasing the amount available for local good causes.

In total, five groups were selected from the applications received.

All Saints Church Hall, Gobowen, and English Bridge Workshop, Shrewsbury, each to receive £6,000 for building improvements including window replacements, insulation upgrades and new solar PV installations.

Ellerdine Village Hall was awarded £3,750 to replace its fire doors and Whitchurch Scout & Guides Church House secured £3,780 for essential window upgrades.

Marton Village Hall is to receive £4,200 to install new LED lighting and external doors.

The Twemlows Solar Farm generates enough clean electricity to power around 3,400 homes each year. In 2025, the site produced more than 10 million kWh of renewable energy — over 10% above forecast — thanks to an exceptionally sunny year.

STCE Director and Chair Robert Saunders said the grants demonstrate the tangible benefits of community-owned energy:

“Following on from our second successful share offer, we are very pleased to be able to award these grants. The share offer gave people the opportunity to tackle climate change directly and deliver local community benefits. Their confidence in STCE, and our management of the Solar Farm, has helped make the annual distribution of community grants a reality. This demonstrates the positive real-world impact local renewable energy generation has when owned by the communities that host them. This illustrates what we aim to deliver, with the solar farm’s operations expected to generate at least £1 million for good causes across the county.”

 

We now have 8 applications in for the Twemlows 2 2025 grant allocation.  It’s great to see so many groups looking for funding for carbon  reduction projects but with a total requested of over £40k against a pot of only £23k the panel will have to make some hard choices.

Howard Betts at Rushbury Village Hall, a previous recipient.

We had a great day at the Blackberry Fair despite Storm Amy, with lots of interest shown in our share offer.  Well done to the organisers for making it all work so well.

Howard  Betts of STCE with Jean Breakell  at the Blackberry fair

Dave Green of STCE with Claire Cartlidge of Fizzgigs.

STCE’s 2025 share offer has closed at £344,035 with 83 new investor members joining us and 26 existing members increasing their investments.  This brings STCE’s total share equity  to nearly Two Thirds of a Million pounds!

The share offer was featured in Shropshire Magazine.

 

We’re holding a Telford launch of our share offer at the Orbit Wellington on Thurs 17th July, 10.30 till 1.30.  Do come along and find out more about what we do and why and ask questions about our share offer.

We are delighted to announce that our planning application for a wind turbine in Bishop’s castle has been approved!  This is a massive step forward for the Heat & Wind project.  We’d like to thank all those who have supported the project, including Lightfoot and the Town Council.

Meanwhile work continues on the heat network studies and a report will be available soon.

We will  be at several events over the Summer, including  the Shrewsbury URC Green Day on  June 28^th and the Ludlow Green Fair on Sun July 13^th do come and have a chat with us..

Our 2025 Share Offer is now open!  This is your chance to invest in a cleaner, greener future.  The funds raised will enable us to secure the purchase of Twemlows solar farm, enhance our Community benefit Fund and increase our membership.

For more details see http://www.stcenergy.org.uk/investors-home

We are very nearly ready to launch our second share offer. This will enable us to carry out the next phase of securing the Twemlows solar farm, to pay out more from our Community Benefit Fund and increase our membership.  If you missed out last time, here’s your chance!  If you invested last time, then you could always invest some more. We are targeting a 6% return on investment and we are just about to pay out 6% to our existing investor members for 2024.

We hope to raise around £500,000 this time and more would be useful, so please help by investing and/or spreading the word, thank you.

for our full may newsletter see https://stcenergy.org.uk/newsletter/

Festival Drayton Centre, 10-1pm

We would love to see you there.

For more details and the share offer document see www.stcenergy.org.uk (coming soon).

We will also be running some Share Offer webinars, on Thurs 19^th June and Wed 16^th July. To find out more  contact our secretary Howard via secretary@stcenergy.org.uk or check out our website..

We will also be holding a similar event at the Orbit in Wellington in July

and we will be at several events over the Summer, including Wellington Mid Summer Fayre on June 14^th, the Shrewsbury URC Green Day on  June 28^th and the Ludlow Green Fair on Sun July 13^th.

by Zoom

Please put the date in your diary.  We would welcome more people on the STCE board, we have much to do and many hands make light work. If you would consider joining the board, please contact Howard as above.  The AGM papers & zoom link will be sent out nearer the time.