CIP $1B Commitment, Renewable Investments in India & Serbia

Norges Bank Investment Management has committed $1 Billion CIP’s C IV renewables fund. Fortis Energy and PowerChina have agreed to collaborate on developing 850 MW of wind and solar in Serbia and southeast Europe. Evren, a renewable platform by Brookfield and Axis Energy, will invest $5 billion for renewables in Andhra Pradesh, India.

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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor.com.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Norge’s Bank Investment Management, has committed one billion dollars Billion dollars to Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners fifth flagship renewable energy fund, CIV. The fund invests in offshore and onshore wind, solar farms, grid and distribution, and also storage.

Investments will be equally split between North America, Western Europe, and developed countries in Asia Pacific. But why is Norway putting a billion dollars into CIP? What’s the plan for that fund?

Philip Totaro: It’s a good question, Allen. I, I think Nordisk Bank has actually had a fairly decent track record of diverting some funds and, and investing them into renewables funds.

Including some much smaller previous investments in with CIP and, and other project development companies or investors in, in renewables. The reason that they’re doing it is because and again, as you mentioned, this is the sovereign wealth fund of Norway. They’re really just looking to diversify their investment stream beyond just oil and gas.

And so I, I don’t know what led them to this relationship with CIP to say, you know what, billion dollars, here you go. But that’s that’s a lot of money and a lot of trust in being able to invest it and, and see a return that I’m sure Norges Bank is, is looking for.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think it’s stable cash looking for a stable investment.

And right now you, as you seen the big, the black rocks and the other pension funds these, what would be the equivalent of the size of like the sovereign wealth fund of Norway, putting money into renewables and into infrastructure for the future. Something to remember here is that CIP, the directors of CIP, and the direction of that company, they’re all ex Ørsted.

So when you see CIP and Orsted kind of playing in the same arenas, it’s because they’re from the same stock. So, but one of the things that CIP does is they do and I like the way they’re spreading this fund around, but they do do a lot of work in the APAC region and other places around the world.

So not only are you geographically diversifying your investment but putting it in infrastructure as well.

Allen Hall: Turkish company Fortis Energy and Power China. I’ve signed an agreement to cooperate on the development and construction of over 850 megawatts of new solar and wind projects in Serbia and Southeast Europe.

The partnership aims to support the region’s transition to greener and more sustainable energy. Fortis is currently developing 509 megawatts of wind farms in Serbia. For which it recently secured permits. All right, Phil, we’ve seen a lot of action with Turkey and China, more recently entering the periphery of Europe.

Is this another one of those plays?

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and for, for Power China, keep in mind, they’re a development and EPC contractor development company and EPC contractor, who has the ability to deliver turnkey projects and in these markets where a, the European Union is not going to have jurisdiction.

And B, the, although Serbia is one, but there, there are a lot of other Eastern European countries where they’re, they’re not North Macedonia, Albania. Come to mind that, that it’s other countries where Fortis has assets under management, but, but the EU is not going to have an influence.

So this is allowing power China as a developer and EPC contractor to come in to Eastern European countries where they can gain a foothold and provide turnkey service where it’s not going to undercut the any domestic players, basically.

Joel Saxum: We talked, we’ve talked at length on the show about the Chinese OEMs progress in multiple geographies around the world.

A lot of not going on in Brazil and APEC region, of course any project that’s in Africa or in the Middle East gets a sniff at a Chinese OEM. Of course, the gold wins, the envisions Ming Yang’s all the above. But what you’re seeing this getting closer to Europe, which may raise some feathers, but either way, what’s happening right now is the energy transition is being moving along forward.

So, in these countries on that Eastern, Eastern side of Europe there. They need renewable energy too. And if this is the most cost effective way to do it, that’s what’s happening.

Allen Hall: Everen, a clean energy platform promoted by Brookfield and Axis Energy has committed to invest 5 billion into India during a meeting with the state’s chief minister and energy minister.

Everen plans to create 3, 500 megawatts of solar and 5, 500 megawatts of wind assets in a phased manner. Everen. 3000 megawatts of projects have already been initiated. All right, Phil, India is becoming more active over the last 12 months or so. We see much more activity there. What is driving that?

Philip Totaro: Well, policy is one and more certainty around these discrepancies with the, between the discoms and the independent power producers.

So the discoms are basically utility companies. either state owned and operated or or otherwise that kind of regulate how, basically how much they’re going to pay you for the power, how much power they want to even offtake. They do have auctions over in India that are now happening a lot more frequently and affording independent power producers more certainty and more opportunity to be able to build more projects, larger projects, get more power into the, into the system and so it’s attracting a lot more investment.

Brookfield’s obviously been over in India for a number of years now and has been very active there. This new investment is, is actually rather sizable as far as, pumping a lot of investment into a single state and, and a lot of megawatts into a single state within India, so it’s it’s a good trend to see the, the country certainly needs to to decarbonize and wants to be able to decarbonize that’s, that’s part of what’s also driving their policy.

But this is, political will being matched with investment, which is what we’d like to be able to see everywhere in the world.

Joel Saxum: So speaking of India, what we’ve seen there from, from the outsider’s perspective, right? We’re, we’re over in the US. We’re not on the boots on the ground in India.

So we don’t know exactly what’s happening, but what we’ve seen there and heard, heard from that market is that, of course, Siemens has been pulling, pulling out. GE has been pulling out. A lot of these Western manufacturers and support of their services and their turbines have been pulling out. So, this information comes from our contact that we use over there Phil Baby of Rotortek.

He kind of knows all of the players, right? So he feeds us back some information. What we’re hearing from him is that, Suzlon is picking up a lot of the slack of everybody, like this backflow of people leaving the market, which is odd because we’re also hearing of a lot of people throwing money in there.

So when some of these larger OEMs are leaving and leaving their service contracts and things behind, it leaves a lot of like an air gap for other companies to fill. And that’s what’s happening here. Is some other people are seeing the opportunity within that growing economy and growing energy need and that energy transition want within India and they’re making it happen.