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. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email
update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored
by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather
Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the
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YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
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https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com 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.