The Numbers Behind a Record Year
When energy companies talk about community investment, the figures can feel abstract — millions here, programmes there, with little visible connection to an actual place. SSE's latest numbers are harder to dismiss. The company has announced a record €7.25 million invested in communities across the island of Ireland during 2025/26, supporting 386 projects and 80 scholarships, and lifting its cumulative community funding since 2001 past €26 million.
The figures come from SSE's All-Island Community Investment Review for 2025/26, published on 9 September 2026, which pulls together funding delivered across three parts of the business: SSE Renewables, which operates wind farms on both sides of the border; SSE Thermal; and SSE Airtricity, the retail energy brand. Of this year's total, around €2.5 million went to communities that host wind farms, while SSE Airtricity awarded €4.7 million to local sustainability projects across the island.
Put the year in context and the trajectory is clear. In the 2024/25 period, SSE Renewables delivered €1.4 million in Ireland to 222 projects and £0.47 million in Northern Ireland to 71 projects. The 2025/26 figure of €7.25 million represents a step-change rather than a steady climb — and it forms part of a wider picture in which SSE invested a record £24.9 million in communities across the UK and Ireland in the same year, supporting 1,284 projects and taking its all-group community investment past £137 million.
Barry O'Regan, Chief Financial Officer at SSE, framed the milestone in terms of partnership rather than generosity. "Since launching our community investment programmes in Ireland and Northern Ireland, SSE has awarded more than €26 million in community funding across the island, and this year we have invested more than ever before," he said, adding that the funds are "about much more than financial support — they are about working in partnership with local communities to deliver tangible benefits for the people and places that host critical infrastructure."
Who Decides Where the Money Goes
The most interesting part of the review is not the total — it is the mechanism. SSE has built its Irish community funding around community-led decision making, with local communities shaping funding priorities and independent community representatives playing a central role in investment decisions. In practice, that means a residents' association, a GAA club or a development association near a wind farm is not applying to a distant corporate committee with its own agenda; the priorities are set locally, and locals sit in judgement on the applications.
This matters more than it might first appear. Community benefit funds attached to renewable energy projects have existed in Ireland for years, but their track record has been mixed — some have delivered transformative local investment, others have sat largely unspent or been distributed in ways communities did not feel ownership of. The review positions SSE's approach as an answer to that problem: funding priorities set by the people who live with the infrastructure, and decisions made with independent community voices at the table.
Rhian Kelly, SSE's Chief Sustainability Officer, put it directly: "SSE's community funds are making a real local impact across Ireland and Northern Ireland, supporting projects shaped by communities themselves." She described the approach as "best practice in community-led funding — ensuring the benefits of our investments are shared locally and deliver lasting value across the island of Ireland."
Yellow River: The Newest Fund in the Family
The newest piece of the network sits in the Midlands. Yellow River Wind Farm — 29 turbines with an installed capacity of 101MW, outside Rhode in County Offaly — opened its inaugural Community Benefit Fund for applications in January 2026, structured in three strands: a Local Fund, a Major Project Fund for larger transformational projects, and a Near Neighbour Fund for those living within a kilometre of the turbines.
By mid-September, the first money had moved. Twenty community projects across Offaly, Meath and Westmeath received over €214,000 in the fund's opening round, with awards made to not-for-profit groups operating within a 10km radius of the wind farm and priority given to those within 5km. For a fund at the very start of its life, that is a meaningful opening statement — and the funding strategy commits to a three-year cycle, with committee members rotating and the strategy reviewed to keep it aligned with community interests.
Alongside it runs SSE Airtricity's island-wide Generation Green Community Fund, which in previous rounds has funded dozens of community sustainability projects across Ireland, including projects on island communities — the kind of places where a small grant for an energy upgrade or a community facility can carry disproportionate weight. Kelly cited both funds in her comments, alongside investments in "sustainability, energy efficiency, education and local priorities that matter most" to communities.
Why This Matters to the Energy Transition
Ireland is asking a great deal of its communities over the next decade. More wind farms, more grid infrastructure, more solar — much of it in rural areas, and all of it requiring public consent that is earned locally rather than granted centrally. The evidence from across Europe is consistent: communities that see tangible, locally-controlled benefit from energy infrastructure are far more likely to support it, and far less likely to spend years objecting to it.
In that light, €7.25 million is not just corporate goodwill — it is part of the social contract that makes the build-out possible. O'Regan made the connection explicitly, noting that SSE invests "not only in the energy infrastructure itself, but also in the communities connected to it," and pointing to Ireland's role as it hosts the EU Council Presidency: "the publication of this review is a real opportunity to showcase how Ireland has become a European leader in delivering lasting benefits for communities through the transition to a cleaner energy future."
There is also a practical education dividend. Eighty scholarship students are being supported through this year's funding — young people from host communities gaining qualifications in areas the energy transition desperately needs, from engineering to environmental science. It is the kind of investment whose return shows up a decade later, in the people who come home to build the next round of projects.
How Is It Actually Going?
By the evidence of the review itself, well — and measurably so. Three hundred and eighty-six projects funded in a single year is not a token gesture; it is roughly one project supported for every day of the year, spread across both jurisdictions. The funds are being distributed quickly — Yellow River's fund opened in January and had money in community accounts by September — and the decision-making structure puts community representatives at the centre rather than the periphery.
The honest caveat is the same one that applies to every corporate community fund: the test is not the announcement but the decade. Funds only prove their value when they outlive the news cycle, when the committees keep rotating, and when the projects funded in year one are still running in year ten. What this year's review establishes is a baseline of scale and transparency — a published, auditable record of where the money went — which is precisely the foundation that long-term credibility is built on.
The Bottom Line
SSE has announced a record €7.25 million of community investment across the island of Ireland for 2025/26, supporting 386 projects and 80 scholarships and taking its total since 2001 past €26 million — with around €2.5 million going to wind farm host communities through SSE Renewables and €4.7 million awarded by SSE Airtricity to local sustainability projects. The structure behind the money matters as much as the amount: locally-set priorities, independent community representatives in decision-making roles, a three-strand fund at the new 101MW Yellow River Wind Farm in Offaly that has already put €214,000 into twenty local projects, and an island-wide Generation Green fund alongside it. As Ireland builds the renewable infrastructure its climate targets demand, this review is a demonstration that the benefits can be shared locally, visibly and at genuine scale — north and south alike.
Sustainability Pulse covers climate, energy, ESG and environmental policy through an Irish lens. Subscribe to the Sustainability Pulse Briefing — every Wednesday.