A renewable energy project – set to be the largest in Northern Ireland – has secured financing worth £81mn.

The Evermore renewable energy project, expected to become operational in 2015, is a 15.8MWe wood-fuelled combined heat and power (CHP) station to be built on a 10-acre site in Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

Investec was sole lead arranger of the senior debt, which will be partially guaranteed and funded by Denmark’s export credit agency EKF and its funding programme ELO, Chris Mitman, head of export and agency finance at Investec, tells GTR.

“We signed for the full senior debt and then assigned part of this and the EKF guarantee to ELO (the Danish state funding programme administered by EKF). We remain EKF agent representing their and ELOs interests for the portion of the senior debt assigned,” says Mitman.

A further portion of the financing is being provided by UK Green Investment Bank and venture capital firm Foresight Group, through its UK Waste Resources & Energy Fund. Their £20mn investment forms part of the total project cost of £81mn, the remainder of which is being provided by GCP Infrastructure Fund Limited (GCP) and Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor.

Over its lifetime, the project is estimated to save around 3.7 million tonnes of CO2 emissions and produce enough electricity to supply the equivalent of more than 25,000 homes.

The electricity will be supplied to the national grid and the heat output will be used by an integrated wood drying facility, supplying fuel for new biomass boilers within Northern Ireland. The project will be fuelled by around 110,000 tonnes a year of wood secured under a long-term fuel supply contract from Stobart Biomass.