Small-scale solar specialist CleanCapital has secured a US$300 million investment from Manulife Investment Management to help grow its asset portfolio.
Thomas Byrne, CleanCapital’s chief executive, said that Manulife’s investment would provide the company with the capacity to offer “a multitude” of investment services and solutions to mid-market renewable energy companies.
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It comes as CleanCapital bought two renewable energy portfolios totalling 63MW in deals worth a culminative US$775 million, which includes operating solar, new-build solar and energy storage systems.
The company has bought a 16MW solar portfolio with 30 assets across 10 US states, which is expected to begin construction this year, and has also become the sole owner of a 46.9 MW operating commercial and industrial (C&I) solar portfolio, after buying the assets through an equity partnership with investor BlackRock in 2019. The second portfolio covers 60 projects in California, Massachusetts and New Jersey, and the energy they produce is contracted by 26 offtakers through long-term power purchase agreements (PPA). CleanCapital now oversees 200MW of renewable assets in the US, with 152 projects in 18 states having individual capacities in the 25kW-12.6MW region.
In an email exchange with our sister publication Energy-Storage.news, Byrne added that the investment from Manulife would also enable CleanCapital to invest more heavily in the growing energy storage market, and anticipates “closing on a number of interesting storage deals this year”.
Jason Segal, managing partner of Javelin Capital, which advised CleanCapital on the transaction, said its structure as a platform investment gives the company more “flexibility to continue to work with leading developers” to bring the assets to life.