Vivienne Westwood becomes ambassador for clean energy Trillion Fund

Fashion designer and environmental activist Dame Vivienne Westwood has become a major shareholder in the renewable energy crowdfunding platform the Trillion Fund.

Ms Westwood has invested £1m in the platform and will also become an ambassador for the project, which enables investors to use crowdfunding to finance solar and wind energy projects around the world.

A recent project that was supported by the fund saw investors commit support towards multiple wind turbines across the UK and the £1.25 million target was met ahead of schedule.

The fund will use Westwood’s cash injection to continue to develop its platform and to boost awareness about its various projects.

The start-up has raised £2 million in growth capital from a consortium of investors and the figure is expected to rise to £5 million by the end of the year.

The official OFFtheGRID launch of the platform will take place in London on Thursday and will be completely solar-powered.

The Trillion Fund was founded in 2011 by Dr Michael Stein and Phillip Riches to help raise US$1 trillion through crowd-investing to finance renewable energy developments globally.

The platform was launched in response to warnings given by the United Nations that it will take US$1 trillion of investment annually to prevent the world from warming by more than 2 degrees.

The Trillion Fund merged with Buzzbnk, the UK’s first social enterprise crowdfunding platform in July.

The partnership now represents the biggest social crowdfunding platform in the UK with a combined user base of 14,000 investors.

It now has a funding pot of up to £500 million for clean energy projects.

By the end of September the fund will havefour live projects and a further two are due to go live in October.