Three UK-based banks will start offering new loans to eligible onshore wind farms from this week.

Wind farm developers and the banks involved will have an opportunity to broker the deals at a forum in the city hosted by energy secretary Ed Miliband and chancellor Alistair Darling.

The scheme is supported by the Treasury and Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). It could enable around £1.4bn of onshore wind projects to move to construction over the next 3 years.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) will provide up to £700 million of the new finance, with the remainder matched by RBS, Lloyds Banking Group and BNP Paribas Fortis.

The loans will be available to eligible onshore wind projects with a total project cost of between £20m and £100m.

Miliband said: “The UK now has 4GW of wind capacity. And the pace of installation is picking up. It took us 14 years to build the first gigawatt, and just one year to build the last. But we still need a 6-fold increase in renewables by 2020 to hit our renewables target. That target is vital if we are to be on course to cutting emissions by 80% by 2050. So we need to pull out the stops including making sure the capital is there to build the wind farms in the first place. This partnership of the EIB with RBS, BNP Paribas Fortis and Lloyds Banking group will address that problem.”