Two leading renewables investment funds today turned in sun-kissed, wind-burnished figures for 2022’s first half, storing up wealth for their backers.
Gresham House Energy Storage Fund, the LSE’s largest investors in its self-created niche, posted revenues 20.6% higher at £30.1 million, earned from its 17 batteries, totalling 425MW. Earnings before interest, tax and depreciation advanced marginally, to £22.7 million.
Eleven projects under construction, all wholly owned, at the end of August totalled 527MW, with 90MW more at Enderby and Coupar Angus due to be lit within days.
Chair John Leggate, pictured, drew comfort from 11GW of renewable capacity contracted in the UK’s most recent latest CfD subsidy auctions.
The half’s above-target returns pleased Leggate. New equity totalling £150 million, plus future draw downs of agreed debt, now put the investor on track to reach 1GW of capacity by Q2 next year, and 1.4GW by 2024, he told shareholders.
ORIT, the Europe-spanning renewables fund of Octopus Energy Generation, grew its net assets 8.6% year on year, to £627.5 million.
Purchase of four projects, including Cambridgeshire’s 68MW Breach PV farm and 7.75% of Maquarie’s 270MW Lincs wind farm operating off Skegness, featured among the half’s highlights.
ORIT has set a future-facing internal constraint of having 51% of its operational revenue until 2032 being explicitly inflation-linked.
With 347 assets in seven countries and four technologies, ORIT today confirmed another fast-arriving push for its ‘Drang nach Osten’ into German onshore wind.
Its parent Octopus Energy Generation this morning confirmed two wind farm deals worth a combined 57 MW. The first sees it purchase the unbuilt 22.4MW Wörrstadt project near Frankfurt, due to spin next year.
The second deal saw OEG confirm its snapping up of the 34.7MW Leeskow wind project near Dresden from local developers, a purchase made on behalf of ORIT. Leeskow’s seven turbines will became fully operational in coming days.
