Manufacturing News

Partners Group to invest in 1.3GW renewable energy platform in Australia

Partners Group, the global private markets investment manager, has announce a decision to invest a total of $700 million in the development of a large-scale renewable energy platform in Australia.

The platform, which will be known locally as Grassroots Renewable Energy Platform, will be seeded with the 270MW Sapphire Wind Farm project in NSW’s New England region, and will in addition construct over 1.3GW of new wind power, solar power and battery storage assets across Australia within the next four years.

To realise the Grassroots platform, Partners Group has teamed with local developer CWP Renewables, also an investor in the project.

Partners Group first joined forces with CWP in 2016 when it announced a $250 million investment into Sapphire Wind Farm, a 270MW development project located in the state of New South Wales.

The second project under the Grassroots platform will be Crudine Ridge Wind Farm, a 135MW construction-ready wind farm near Mudgee in New South Wales. Construction will begin in May 2018 and will be completed by September 2019. Crudine Ridge Wind Farm will consist of 37 GE 3.63MW turbines and, once operational, will provide a further 400GWhrs of annual power output to the grid.

Half of this energy has been sold to Powershop, an Australian electricity provider that provides 100% green energy to its retail customers. The wind farm is also expected to support 75 full-time equivalent jobs during construction, stimulating further investment in local businesses and services, and deliver more than eight million tonnes of carbon emissions abatement over its lifetime.

In addition to Crudine Ridge Wind Farm, there are a number of other pipeline projects for Grassroots, which comprise a combination of wind, solar and battery storage assets.

The project is another example of new investments going to renewable energy generation rather than traditional coal or gas-fired power generators. As it was highlighted at the Australian Energy Storage Conference and Exhibition 2018 last week, the transition to renewable energy is inevitable and makes economical sense.

 

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