Allied Irish Banks is to administer a €200 million fund to finance wind farms in Ireland. The money will come jointly from the European Investment Bank and AIB and will be available presently for wind farm projects.

Financing will be available for up to 15 years at competitive rates, according to AIB's director of personal, business and corporate banking, Bernard Byrne, who spoke at the Irish Wind Energy Association's autumn conference in Galway yesterday.

He said it was the desire of both AIB and the European Investment Bank that the fund is drawn down quickly and replaced by a similar one, as was the case with AIB’s small and medium enterprise fund.

The money will be available to fund projects of up to 75 megawatts in size or up to €75 million.

He said those interested in drawing down the funds must provide between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of the capital involved. “No project can just be debt financed. Every project will need equity,” he said.

Investments
He told the conference that AIB intended to invest €1 billion in renewable energy and energy conservation projects by 2017, including retrofitting homes and electric cars.

The conference was told that 119 new wind energy projects have signed contracts to accept grid connections with the capacity to generate 2,746 megawatts of wind and have paid deposits of €27 million .

This will more than double the existing capacity which is 1,950 megawatts of wind.