PURE finance three solar energy projects

The projects are:.

* Firthmoor Community Centre, Darlington - 10kW.

* Leominster Community Solar, Bridge Street Sports Centre - 50kW.

* Osprey Leisure Centre, Portland - 10kW.

The projects have been funded with donations from:.

* Barclaycard Breathe, the UK's first green credit card which donates 0.5% of card spend to PURE.

* British Airways' One Carbon Destination Fund which transfers BA passenger donations to PURE.

PURE uses donations to provide funding for community energy projects, primarily in the form of low interest loans.

Projects then use payments from the Feed-in Tariff and the Renewable Heat Incentive to repay the loans.

The projects benefit from reduced energy bills and lower emissions, while loan repayments enable PURE's funding to be recycled to assist ever more projects.

Eithne Marie George, Director of Leominster Community Solar, a community energy cooperative, said 'We had spent months developing our project and launched a community share issue to raise the funding in October so the Government's change to Feed-in Tariff rates put the viability of our project at risk'.

Kevin Nicholson, Chairman of Firthmoor and District Community Association, said 'Our annual energy bills have increased so much in the last 5 years that we needed to do something just to survive.

Thankfully we have secured this funding support in the nick of time'.

Robert Rabinowitz, Company Secretary of PURE the Clean Planet Trust, commented .We are pleased that PURE was able to move speedily to ensure that these projects could provide benefits to communities in Portland, Darlington and Leominster'.