Australian company Birdwood Energy and the super fund Aware Super have formed a new platform that is aimed at investing in distributed energy projects.
The Birdwood Distributed Energy Platform will focus on a ‘significant number’ of small-scale distributed solar projects across the NEM fitted with BESS, in addition to larger strategic projects, with the platform to service retail, commercial and industrial customers via offtake agreements.
“Distributed energy is difficult for institutional investors to access due to the multitude of small developers and companies,” said Scott McGregor, Managing Partner at Birdwood Energy.
“While this sector offers the cheapest, most secure and cleanest energy system, it does require investment at scale in order to achieve capital and operating efficiencies and hit our net zero targets – with distributed energy we are able to fulfil about 60% of Australia’s future energy requirement.
“With Aware Super’s capital and support, we look forward to helping make Australia a world leader in the deployment of distributed energy resources.”
The Birdwood Distributed Energy Platform has already acquired two operating solar farms that will be boosted with a BESS component, while the partnership has also invested in a commercial renewable asset finance business and has a further 10 grid solar and battery projects it is gearing up to build.
“An investment in the Birdwood Distributed Energy Platform is not only consistent with our strategy to increase our exposure to energy transition through diversification into distributed renewable energy generation and storage, it is also aligned with our objective of generating strong risk-adjusted returns for Aware Super members, which can be achieved through the deployment of further capital into sustainable investments,” said Mark Hector, Head of Infrastructure at Aware Super.
Hector added: “With combined experience of c 4.1 GW – or US$6 billion – on renewable and energy storage projects, we are excited to support Scott McGregor and Graeme Ludlow who are focused on achieving their vision of ensuring the energy infrastructure in Australia gets to Net Zero, as fast as possible.”
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