North Star Funding, $2T Clean Energy Investment, Yokogawa Acquires BaxEnergy

UK's North Star secures funding for 40 new offshore wind service
vessels by 2040. The IEA reports clean energy investment will hit
$2 trillion in 2024, though challenges remain in developing
economies. Yokogawa acquires BaxEnergy and Lotus Infrastructure
Partners acquires PNE AG's U.S. renewable business. 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 show
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit
Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting -
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. UK based North Star has secured up to 500 million in
debt investment to fast track tech's goal of adding 40 hybrid
service providers. Operation vehicles to its fleet by 2040. The
funding package includes term facilities and committed resources
from institutional investors and banks. The capital infusion will
support North Star's continued growth in the offshore wind market.
The company currently has several new belt SOVs in operation and
under construction for major offshore wind projects to fill 40 SOVs
can't come soon enough. Philip Totaro: Indeed. And they've, as you
mentioned, they've already got a fleet of. SOVs operational for
various projects around Europe. These new ones where, I mean, 40,
by 2040 is, is quite ambitious. That's, one, one per more than one
per year. This is obviously going to come in handy for what the
industry needs. And more importantly, it'll give them the option to
be able to re flag or re domesticate those vessels for use in,
other markets where they're going to be needed, like the U. S.,
potentially, again, up to a point where we have Jones Act issues or
markets like South Korea, Brazil Taiwan, etc. So, it's much needed.
Joel Saxum: So, for those of you who don't know, or new to offshore
wind, or haven't followed the program before, an SOV is basically a
floating hotel for all the offshore wind workers. It has a lot of
deck space, usually has a small crane, not a big work crane, but
enough to move things around on deck, or, or transition some, some
gear that's needed, some tools, or some equipment to the transition
piece on an offshore ship. Wind turbine. So basically, these are
the big vessels that kind of are resident out in a wind farm.
They'll go out for a couple weeks at a time until they have to do
crew changes. Sometimes even doing crew changes at sea where the
vessel just stays out there and a little transfer boat comes and
moves people around. But these are the big vessels. These SOVs are
the things that make the wind farms tick offshore. Without them
they're not going to stay up and running for very long. Allen Hall:
The International Energy Agency reports that investment in clean
energy technologies, including renewables, will be twice that of
fossil fuels this year. Global spending on sectors such as wind,
solar, grids, EV, nuclear, and energy storage is expected to reach
about 2 trillion in 2024, while oil, gas, and coal receive dollars.
However, the IEA warns a persistent low investment in clean energy
in emerging and developing economies due to high costs of capital.
And Phil, we've seen this play out in Asia at the moment and in
Africa. Philip Totaro: Yes, and that's probably where a lot of the
new investment certainly supported by the World Bank or the
International Monetary Fund would be made. The, the reality of this
is that we're all. I say we, countries are all suffering with the,
this high interest rate environment and as we record this the U. S.
Federal Reserve said that they're going to continue to maintain
interest rates where they are which is really not helping matters
at all. So, it's, it, we're getting to a point where. This 2
trillion, whether that's accurate or not, and I, I do question it
because, when is the IEA ever produced an accurate forecast on, on
anything to be, to be a little, a little blunt, I guess. But they,
we, we can't even spend the money if we were going to right now,
because everybody's just kind of taking a wait and see attitude
with things. They don't want to have to debt refinance later. And
so. They'd rather either invest their money elsewhere or just park
it and hold on to it until they can get a better cost of capital.
Joel Saxum: I have read a couple articles lately that are kind of
bemoaning the double standard. And this is a weird thing to talk
about, but in developing countries, they are being told, you should
be putting renewable energies in place. You should be putting
renewable energies in place as you sit today. But they, they were
basically, the talk is they're being basically handicapped by the
fact that they don't get to use the cheap, easy power generation or
electricity generation technologies of the past that. Spurned
economies of developed countries along during the industrial
revolution. So there's this kind of a tit for tat thing going on
there. Another thing, another note here as well, as there's
starting to become a market, and this is a really good thing.
They're starting to become a market for. used wind turbines
actually to go to some developing countries. So, in the United
States, when we have PTC driven projects where in 10 years, you'll
take something out of commission. A lot of times those don't have
their life used up, right? They've got 10, 15, 20 years of life, or
if you maintain them or. Update them. They've got 20, 25 years of
life left in them. They're starting to become a market for taking
those assets apart, repurposing them and rebuilding them in
developing countries or in places where it's hard to get energy
resources built. So that's, that's a good thing. Allen Hall:
Yokogawa Electric Corporation has acquired BaxEnergy, a leading
provider of renewable energy management solutions. BaxEnergy's
proven solutions have been adopted by major power companies across
Europe to manage over 120 gigawatts of renewable energy operations
in more than 40 countries. This acquisition will enable Yoko Gawa
to offer solutions globally supported by its consultation and after
sales service through its worldwide network. Boy, Phil, the
combination of big players at the moment, there's still a lot of
cash moving around for acquisitions. Philip Totaro: And that's
what's interesting about a deal like this is, okay, first of all,
Yoko Gawa obviously does a lot of, control systems, sensor systems,
particularly in oil and gas and other industries. This gives them a
bigger footprint in the power generation sector and ties them in
further to utilities and, and renewable energy asset management and
asset performance. But the, the bigger, the, the bigger picture
here is that it's coming at a time when as we talked about with
high interest rates, you're potentially going to see more deals
happening because companies aren't going to be able to go out there
and get easy access to loans or other capital that they could use
for growth. And so the pathway to growth is potentially through
partnership or merger and that's going to probably continue. We've
seen a lot of deals so far this year, and this is a trend that can
continue. Joel Saxum: Nice thing here that we see with this
BaxEnergy being acquired is they're, they're now going to be able
to offer their services to many more customers, right? They're
going to have some capital behind them. They've got, of course, an
expanded network behind them. Allen and I were just on the phone
today with a group that we're doing this kind of the same idea of
some software that can analyze data and improve efficiencies,
right? Their software BaxEnergy claims can improve efficiencies by
up to 10%. There's a few companies out there doing this, but I, I
believe there will be more and more of this data enabled
performance upgrades coming to the wind industry and solar
industry. For that matter, Allen Hall: US infrastructure investor,
Lotus infrastructure partners has acquired the U S arm of German
renewable developer, PNE AG the acquired business now. Now renamed
Allium Renewable Energy has a pipeline of 18 wind, solar, and
storage projects at various stages of development totaling over 3
gigawatts. Allium has already developed and monetized 877 megawatts
of wind and solar projects to date. Lotus believes Allium's
projects identification and commercialization capabilities will
significantly expand in its own renewable development efforts. Most
of the large players in the renewables space are backed by large
banks or financial corporations. What are those large corporations
like behind P& E doing with these these sales and mergers?
Philip Totaro: Lately, there's been an uptick in infrastructure
funds and investors wanting to get into renewable asset ownership
because it's an asset class that they understand now and they think
they can make money with. Morgan Stanley, which is the, has been
the majority owner of P& E has been trying to offload, the
whole company, frankly, for a long time. But it seems like with
this deal, they're, they're doing it a bit more piecemeal now. And
so, getting the U. S. based assets off to this infrastructure fund,
freeze them up to then pursue other deals, potentially regionally
focused deals,