London-based renewables fund NextEnergy Capital (NEC) has bought a 100MW solar PV plant in Florida, US, marking the first acquisition under its NextPower ESG V (NPV ESG) investment fund.
The project is ready-to-build in Highlands County, Florida; construction is expected to begin in Q1 2024 and operations forecast for early 2025. The site will deploy bifacial modules mounted on single-axis tracker systems.
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NextEnergy said that the US is a key market for its NPV ESG fund given its low-risk, attractive environment for investment. The key driver for this is most likely the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which – as of August – has added US$100 billion to the US economy through solar and energy storage alone, according to US trade body the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
“Utility-scale solar represents a very large investment opportunity set globally,” said Michael Bonte-Friedheim, CEO and founding partner of NextEnergy Group. “Given our market presence and experience in the US and NPV ESG’s other target geographies, we expect to continue deploying the fund’s capital rapidly.”
Launched in January, the fund closed its first round of financing in July with US$480 million in commitments. It has an ultimate target of US$1.5 billion and a hard cap of US$2 billion. The fund ultimately seeks 3.5GW worth of investments in utility-scale solar projects across countries involved in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), specifically in Europe, North America and Chile.
NPV ESG’s pipeline of acquisition opportunities includes a total of over 1GW of assets currently under negotiation or in exclusivity across Spain, Italy, Poland, and the US, the company said.
The previous iteration of the fund, the NextPower III ESG fund, raised US$900 million for around 1.9GW of final capacity.
Fellow renewables investment manager Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) closed US$6.1 billion in its fifth flagship fund this summer, around half of its target sum to support around 20GW of generation capacity.
