UK • RENEWABLES
RWE Innogy, Britain’s largest wind farm developer, has sold two-thirds of its wind farm portfolio to raise £400 million to fund new developments. Its assets will be held in a new company called Zephyr Investments,owned by Englefield Capital, RWE Innogy, and the First Islamic Investment Bank. These companies will invest a total of £100 million in Zephyr, with an additional £300 million to be raised from commercial debt. This is the first UK portfolio financing of wind farms. It is also the first in the UK to fund an offshore development, North Hoyle, through the financial markets.
Zephyr will acquire all of RWE Innogy’s existing and planned wind farm developments for the next three years, and a further 210 MWe under development.
This comes at a time when investor support for renewable energy projects had been sluggish over concerns that many of the government’s incentives would be withdrawn before the cost of investment had been covered. Stephen Timms, the UK energy minister, has extended incentives for renewable energy developments in an attempt to overcome these fears.
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