More than 50 runners from the Renewable Energy Industry are set to take their places this weekend at the start line of the fastest marathon in the UK to raise money to help bring the benefits of renewable energy to some of the poorest people in the world through the running4renewables initiative.

Individuals and teams from companies across the industry including Natural Power, Scottish Renewables and Smartest Energy are amongst those who will be participating in the Edinburgh Marathon, Half Marathon or Hairy Haggis relay which take place on Sunday 22nd May.

The inspiration behind the event came from Daniel Rafferty – a young wind farm developer from Edinburgh based renewable energy company vento ludens who organised the first ever running4renewables event last year which raised just under £30,000 for renewable energy charity Renewable World. This enabled Renewable World to complete a micro hydro project in the remote village of Ndiriri in Mozambique and upgrade the facilities of a health centre in the community of Monkey Point on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua providing solar power lighting, a fridge to store life saving vaccines and a nebuliser.

Jude Monson, Commercial Manger at Inverness based AWS Ocean Energy who participated in last year’s event explained that, “running4renewables is a great example of how our industry can work together to overcome issues! Bringing together competitors from all aspects of the industry proved to be a great way of meeting like minded professionals while raising funds for a good cause.”

This year the initiative hopes to raise enough money to bring solar power to two rural villages in Nicaragua which currently have no access to energy, providing power for lighting and appliances in homes and the village primary schools and for pumping clean water improving health and agricultural production.

Good luck to everyone who is running on Sunday - let's hope the Scottish sun shines for you!

For more information please contact Marketing Director Melanie Matthews.

Email: melanie.matthews@renewable-world.org or call: 01273 606 685