Infrastructure investor Macquarie has written to UK ministers to verify it has financed billions of kilos of environmentally pleasant tasks as a part of an settlement in its buy of the Inexperienced Funding Group from the federal government three years in the past.
The Australian firm promised to finance £3bn in inexperienced vitality tasks within the UK and Europe over the three years following its £1.6bn acquisition of the group, which was then often called the Inexperienced Funding Financial institution, in August 2017.
Macquarie mentioned that, by October 2020, the group had agreed £4.7bn in financing within the UK and Europe, and £6.9bn worldwide. About £3.1bn of this financing is within the UK.
In a letter to Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK minister for vitality, Daniel Wong, world co-head of Macquarie Capital and chair of the Inexperienced Funding Group, mentioned it had “remained true to its authentic mission”.
The letter added that its progress mirrored the “goals of the UK authorities, in permitting GIG the liberty to extend the sectors and applied sciences during which it operates, commit ever higher ranges of capital to inexperienced tasks, and develop its operations internationally to export this UK success story abroad”.
The financial institution was arrange underneath the coalition authorities in 2012 to attract private capital into offshore wind farms, waste-to-energy vegetation and energy-saving tasks.
It launched a sale course of three and a half years later to cut back public debt. The federal government had additionally concluded there was sufficient non-public capital out there and a threat that the financial institution was including to competitors within the sector, based on a Nationwide Audit Workplace report on the sale.
By the point it was bought in 2017, the financial institution had invested in 100 tasks with a complete transaction worth of £12bn, committing £3.4bn of its personal capital.
Nonetheless, the NAO concluded that not sufficient data was obtainable “to claim the diploma to which the GIG was the reason for the expansion within the inexperienced financial system since 2012”.
Greater than half the funding capital went to wind farms, the place the UK is now the worldwide chief in offshore capability, based on a current International Wind Council Work Vitality Report.
The sale of the financial institution was extensively criticised on the time by MPs together with Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat chief on the time, who questioned Macquarie’s dedication to environmental tasks.
However Mark Dooley, world head of the Inexperienced Funding Group, mentioned that the GIG “had carried out its job” by the point of the sale. The UK stays some of the “investable vitality and infrastructure markets on this planet”, he mentioned.
He added that since taking on the financial institution Macquarie had “greater than delivered — triggering non-public capital markets to assist renewable vitality markets”.
It’s now in 25 nations and employs 450 employees, together with 40 in Edinburgh. It’s more and more trying to make investments earlier within the improvement and development course of, together with in renewable vitality storage.
Mr Dooley pointed to an upsurge in company purchasers. These embody Tesco, which is working with the GIG to put in photo voltaic vitality at quite a few properties within the UK, and Amazon, which has just lately introduced plans to put money into 127 photo voltaic and wind tasks, making it one of many world’s largest company consumers of inexperienced vitality.
He mentioned authorities plans to create one other UK infrastructure financial institution, anticipated to be very similar to the GIG, might work if it invested within the earliest-stage applied sciences which might be struggling to get finance. The federal government has pledged to announce extra particulars within the spring.
