Green Investment Bank Offshore Wind Fund Surpasses £1 Billion Target

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The Green Investment Bank Offshore Wind Fund has surpassed its £1 billion target with its sixth UK asset acquisition, with £1.12 billion worth of assets now currently under management.

Announced this week, the UK Green Investment Bank’s (GIB) Offshore Wind Fund (managed by GIB Financial Services Limited) has now surpassed its original target of £1 billion worth of assets under management with the acquisition of a 44% stake in the 270 megawatts (MW) Lincs offshore wind farm, located off the Lincolnshire Coast at Skegness, England. The Fund acquired the stake from Centrica plc and Siemens Project Ventures for £429 million.

The 270 MW Lincs Offshore Wind Farm has been in operation since August 2012

This brings the total amount of offshore wind assets under management to £1.12 billion, totaling 1.45 gigawatts (GW).

Video: The story of the world’s first offshore wind fund.

“Delivering the continuing growth of renewable energy is reliant on attracting new types of investors,” said Shaun Kingsbury, Chief Executive of GIB plc and Chair of GIBFS. “In setting up an offshore wind fund GIB has created an innovative way to connect deep pools of long term capital to UK green infrastructure projects.

“In a short period of time we have successfully raised our first fund and fully invested its capital, passing our £1 billion target.”

The GIB Offshore Wind Fund was announced back in June of 2014, under plans to raise £1 billion for a new fund to “acquire equity stakes in operational offshore wind projects in the UK.” In October of 2015, we heard that the Fund had reached £818 million worth of assets under management.

“This is an attractive asset purchase in the current market and will likely be the final investment for the UK GIB Offshore Wind Fund,” added Karl Smith, Managing Director of the GIB Offshore Wind Fund, regarding Lincs offshore wind farm. “We are delighted to be entering into the Fund’s first partnership with DONG Energy. Lincs joins a portfolio of five other assets, producing returns consistent with those expected from the Fund investors.”

Also in the news this week was the announcement by Danish offshore wind energy giant that it would be providing operation and maintenance service to the Lincs Offshore Wind Farm, announced in cooperation with the GIB announcement, as DONG Energy will retail its own share in the Lincs project.

“We’re delighted to become O&M service provider to Lincs,” explained Jens Jakobsson, Senior Vice President, Operations at DONG Energy Wind Power. “It will be the first time we take over O&M of an operating wind farm, which we haven’t constructed ourselves.”

“I wish to thank Centrica and Siemens for a great partnership on Lincs. We’re now looking forward to further strengthening our relationship with the Green Investment Bank, which is also our partner in the Westermost Rough Offshore Wind Farm.”


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Joshua S Hill

I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

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