Lumo and Oneplanetcrowd have joined together to crowdfund a solar project located near Perpignan in the South West of France. Lumo is a France-based crowdfunding platform. Oneplanetcrowdis operating out of the Netherlands. The two platforms were said to have jointly developed a solution to overcome the barrier of cross-border crowdlending in Europe and made it possible for French and Dutch citizens to participate in a European project to contribute the energy transition.
The two platforms believe the future of clean energy is all about access to finance. Yet there remains a significant gap between demand and supply of finance for renewable energy. Lumo and Oneplanetcrowd believe it is imperative to have stronger involvement of citizens from all over Europe to advance their shared mission.
Harmonization of European regulations would make it simpler to raise funding across the continent as it is challenging to promote projects in various European countries as each country requires a different license or regulatory approval. Oneplanetcrowd and Lumo have developed a solution to make it possible to conduct a crowdfunding campaign on a platform in another EU country. Both Lumo and Oneplanetcrowd are members of CrowdFundRes, an EU-funded project aiming to unleash the potential of crowdfunding for financing renewable energy projects in Europe.
Oliver Gadja, from the European Crowdfunding Network, commented on the partnership: “Offering cross-border investments in order to allow access to renewable energy projects is an important goal in the EU, but is difficult due to the various jurisdictions. I am excited that two members of ECN together found a practical solution for crossborder crowdlending in Europe.”
The project selected for this pilot experiment is solar park Torreilles, close to Perpignan and near the highway that is often called the ‘Route du Soleil’. The project developer, Amarenco, has set up a special entity that allows for crowdfunding from the Netherlands. After the funding is raised, the entity will buy bonds from the Torreilles solar park project entity, at the same financials terms as French investors on the Lumo platform to complete the transaction.
