Investors Getting Serious in London — $1 Billion Renewable Energy Fund

December 20th, 2009 by Zachary Shahan

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A London-based green investment firm, Earth Capital Partners (ECP), aiming to create a €750 million ($1 billion) renewable energy fund, announced this last week that it had reached its first round fund-raising target. By November 2010, it hopes to reach its total goal of €750 million.

The company is happy with this progress and believes there is demonstrated investor interest in this topic now. Even without an international, legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy, investors are moving forward on this.

With the amount of capital ECP is raising, what types of energy this investment firm is specifically interested in is important. They seem to be aiming at specific sectors of the market.

Specifically, James Murray of BusinessGreen reports that ECP will “invest in solar, biogas and biomass projects in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.”

ECP seems to be on the front end of things, but it is not the first investment company raising this amount of money for renewable energy. NJ-based Hudson Clean Energy Partners (HCEP), which also has an office in London, just reached their goal of raising $1 billion for a clean energy investment fund as well, a couple weeks ago. Like ECP, they focus a lot on solar technology, but are also looking to invest in wind energy.

On both sides of the Atlantic, it looks like investors are feeling confident about renewable energy, even if world leaders and politicians cannot agree on a legally binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, clean tech recently passed biotech and IT as the #1 venture capital investment category worldwide, accumulating $1.59 billion in the third quarter of this year. Solar technology was the leading sector within the category.

This ECP fund looks like yet another positive step forward from the investment world!

via BusinessGreen

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Image Credit 1: Johnny Vulkan via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Image Credit 2: telex4 via flickr under a Creative Commons license

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Tags: $1 billion, 2010, Biogas, Earth Capital Partners, ECP, Energy, Europe, invest, investments, investors, middle east, North Africa, €750 million

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.