London, 4 September 2014 – Fashion Designer Vivienne Westwood held the first of a series of solar-powered parties to promote the use of renewable energy.
The designer teamed with Ross Harding of a social enterprise that promotes renewable energy, Finding Infinity, and a U.K. crowdfunding platform, Trillion Fund, for a party called Off the Grid, which took place in east London at Snap Studios.
Harding said, “the music, the lighting and everything that you see and experience inside is straight from the sun. We brought a bank of batteries out on the street and then wired up to the rooftop. The solar panel is almost like a sculpture on the rooftop.”
A Cygnus Hybrid Power Generator kept the party going and took the events team to charge the batteries. Jamie Hince of the Kills, performing a DJ set on the night and took advantage of the green energy,. Westwood was the backer for the Trillion Fund, investing 1 million pounds, or $1.64 million, in the platform that raises funds for projects of renewable energy.
She said, In the end, I think what Trillion Fund are aiming for is that you have clean energy that costs a very minimum amount of money. It s going to be wonderful for poor people, and it s not going to be good for the traditional investors who have been earning money in the same way for 300 years! But now it s all changing.
“Trillions of pounds of ordinary people’s hard-earned cash currently goes to fund companies that are effectively destroying the planet without most of us even knowing about it,” said Ms Westwood.
“The aims of the fund are to redirect savings and investments that might otherwise go to fossil fuel companies through the hands of traditional fund managers into clean energy and other sustainable businesses instead.”
According to Ms Westwood, Trillion Fund bridges the gap between traditional crowdfunding and social investment.
“The righteous approach to planet saving hasn’t worked in the past,” she said. “Appealing to rational self interest might.
“I’m glad to help pave a new, more inclusive path for environmentalism – one that recognises the right of individuals to also make a profit.”
Trillion Fund will use Vivienne Westwood’s cash injection to continue to develop its platform and to boost awareness about the projects listed on the site.
The start-up has raised £2m in growth capital to date from a consortium of investors. This will rise to £5m by the end of the year.
Finding Infinity aims to use film-making, digital content, events and consulting to convince corporates and consumers to switch to renewable energy.
Trillion Fund was founded in 2011 by Dr Michael Stein and Phillip Riches to help raise $1 trillion through crowd-investing to finance renewable energy developments across the world.
The platform was launched in response to warnings from the United Nations that it will take $1 trillion a year to prevent the world from warming by more than 2 degrees.
In July, Trillion Fund merged with Buzzbnk, the UK’s first social enterprise crowdfunding platform.
With a combined user base of 14,000 investors, the new entity is the biggest social crowdfunding platform in the UK, enabling social and sustainable projects to access potential funding of up to £500m and targeting half a million crowdfunders by the end of 2017.
There will be four projects live on Trillion Fund by the end of September, and a further two in October. The platform is currently pre-launch, but has already raised money for 14 renewable investments.
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