RWE to help build 37MW British solar farm

ESSEN, Germany, April 23 (UPI) -- German energy company RWE said Wednesday it would help build a 37-megawatt solar project to be constructed on an abandoned British airfield.

RWE said, once constructed, the Kencot Hill solar facility will be the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom, generating enough energy to meet the annual demands of 10,000 households.

The project should come online in late 2014. At full capacity, it will be able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 16,000 tons per year.

The German utility company said that, once the project is completed, it will sell Kencot Hill to Foresight Solar Fund Ltd., a British-based infrastructure asset manager, for an undisclosed sum.

Stefan Judisch, the chief executive of the RWE division involved in the program, said the finance deal for Foresight was "innovative" for what he said was the first such program for the German company in the British solar power market.

"RWE aims in future to repeat this structure, attracting additional investors and thus helping the UK and other European governments to deliver their CO2 reduction and renewables targets," he said in a statement.

Members of the European Union aim to cut emissions by 20 percent of their 1990s benchmark and rely on renewable energy for 20 percent of their energy needs by 2020.