Around 100,000 local government employees in Glasgow, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire have invested another slice of their wages into a £50 million offshore wind farm in N. Ireland.
This is a result of the Strathclyde Pension Fund – to which all council workers in the West Central Belt belong and which is managed by a handful of officials in Glasgow cooncil – being a major investor with a 20% holding in the Dublin-based NTR investment fund.
NTR has now added a further 25 MW to its onshore NTR Wind-1 fund with the acquisition of Castlecraig Wind Farm in Northern Ireland, the third such purchase of pre-construction wind assets by NTR from renewable energy developer RES. Capital costs for the project amount to just over £50 million.
The energy development comprises 10 turbines and is expected to be operating by Summer 2018, from which time it would provide enough clean electricity to sustain an estimated 18,500 homes <in Northern Ireland>.
Once operational, Castlecraig Wind Farm will invest in a local benefit fund including the provision of a local electricity discount scheme.
The NTR Wind 1 Fund was launched by NTR plc to invest in onshore wind projects in the UK and Ireland. The Castlecraig wind farm is the 11th such acquisition by NTR and brings total power capacity under management to 195-MW.
Manus O’Donnell, NTR Chief Investment Officer, said; “We are delighted to announce our third transaction with RES in just over eighteen months. To date, we have sourced 58 MW of onshore wind projects through RES. They are an outstanding developer and an important partner for us both in project pipeline and in constructing projects on our behalf.”
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