A Canadian company’s record investment in a massive new Dutch wind farm—one of the biggest deals in the industry’s history—helped drive strong second-quarter results across the global clean energy investment landscape.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance released results for the second quarter of this year today, logging $63.6 billion worth of investment in the sector—up nine percent from the same period in 2013, and 33 percent over the first quarter.
That encouraging result is to a large degree the result of a placement by Toronto-based Northland Power, which in May closed on an approximately CAD$4.2 billion (EUR2.8 billion) stake in the Gemini Wind Farm, a massive 600-megawatt offshore generation project now under construction 85 kilometres off the coast of the Netherlands.
According to Northfield, more than 22 parties—including 12 commercial creditors, four public financial institutions, together with one pension fund and Northland as subordinated debt lenders—plus three other equity consortium partners, were involved in the signing of the financing.
Siemens, one of the project’s equity consortium partners, is supplying the project with 150 four-megawatt wind turbines. Once completed, it will be the largest wind farm in the North Sea, and produce enough clean energy to supply the needs of 1.5 million people each year.
But while Gemini is clearly the “big fish” in this quarter’s results, Bloomberg noted that the increase in investment activity runs across the spectrum.
“The new investment upswing is broad-based, with activity rising across wind and solar, large-scale and small-scale projects, and covering most of the big markets,” said Michael Liebreich, chairman of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s advisory board.
Liebreich also cited the growth in rooftop and small-scale solar, up 41 percent from a year earlier, to $21.2 billion. Venture capital and private equity investment in clean energy companies rose 36 percent to $1.6 billion. Chinese investors accounted for $19.3 billion, up 16 percent over the same period last year.
The U.S. invested $10.6 billion and Europe invested $14 billion.
