Infralogic Investors Forum - Renewable Energy 2022
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Landing Forty Two, London
Agenda
Registration and coffee
Keynote: The UK's Energy Infrastructure Programme
In this session, the keynote speaker, Akshay Kaul, Interim Director of Infrastructure and Security of Supply at Ofgem, the government regulator for the electricity and downstream natural gas markets in Great Britain, will review the UK's energy infrastructure programme with a particular focus on regulated infrastructure assets.
Opening panel: Current state of the European energy transition
Europe’s transition to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 presents challenges and opportunities to infrastructure investors and developers. The radical reduction in the use of hydrocarbons in favour of decarbonised energy sources will involve profound changes in behaviour as well as significant technological innovation and investment. In recent months, the worsening energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine and the increased cost of energy, may have led to a decrease in progress, but regulators and governments have urged institutions not to lose sight of the climate crisis.
- How has the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the cost of energy crisis affected investment in the energy transition? Should governments do more to make the EU independent of Russian fuels?
- Are LNG and biomethane mature enough assets to support the move away from Russian gas? How investable are these assets?
- Which are the most investable renewable energy production activities? Solar, wind, bioenergy hydro or geothermal energy? How are investors and developers approaching energy storage?
- How are infrastructure investors approaching merchant risk in the subsidy free environment?
Panel: Hydrogen production and consumption at a crossroad
European investors’ focus on hydrogen has never been bigger, as EIB figures suggest that up to EUR 42bn of investment will be needed by 2030 in European electrolyser capacity alone. CIP and Ardian have set up multi-billion euro hydrogen-focused funds and several projects are reaching maturity and scale. But there remain major challenges to overcome, not least regulatory support mechanisms and lenders’ willingness to finance such projects. This panel will review opportunities and challenges for the upcoming wave of hydrogen projects across the continent.
- What are the main sources of demand for hydrogen in Europe, and by how much is this demand expected to grow?
- Are new hydrogen projects mainly catering for existing industrial consumption, or are investors preparing for mass adoption in transport and heating?
- How competitive is green hydrogen in today’s market and can its cost come down in the current high electricity price environment?
- With most investment being done by utilities and corporates, to what extent is it attractive to infrastructure investors and why?
- What regulatory support is being planned at European and national level to incentivise green hydrogen adoption and support its production?
- How does the UK approach to supporting blue hydrogen through its carbon capture cluster schemes compare to other European initiatives? Which ones are proving more attractive for investors?
- How bankable are hydrogen production projects today? Are project finance lenders dipping their toes in this market and how can initiatives such as the planned EU hydrogen bank help?
- Are green ammonia and other power-to-x projects more attractive than standalone green hydrogen electrolysers? Do they have an edge in the sustainable transport market?
Networking break
Panel: Clean energy financing in the new rising interest rate environment
Lending to renewables is increasingly becoming less certain amidst the shift to pure merchant lending and the project financing of nascent energy transition sectors. But the dramatic shake-up in the European economies have created yet more uncertainty. How will renewables lending respond to the changing markets?
- What impact are rising interest rates having on borrower appetite for renewables debt to finance construction and support refinancings?
- Are high power prices balancing the rise in borrowing costs for developers, or simply introducing more uncertainty?
- Are higher energy prices translating into more generous PPAs? Or is this hitting offtakers’ creditworthiness and increasing counter-party risk for lenders?
- A variety of merchant debt structures have emerged, but which are the most likely to dominate?
- Are renewables, and particularly offshore wind, still dominated by banks, or are institutional investors taking a bigger slice and why?
- Are rising inflation and interest rates reversing the seemingly unstoppable fall in renewables cost?
- Are more esoteric sectors such as battery storage, hydrogen and carbon capture projects still a long way from being mainstream sectors for project finance bankers?
Case study: Allego – the 2021 EV charging IPO – what next?
Dutch charging infrastructure operator Allego announced its IPO through a merger with Spartan Acquisition Corp. listing on the New York stock exchange at the end of 2021. Citing better access to new financing resources, Allego announced that the IPO will enable the company to “finance the construction of new public charging stations, expand our technology and implement expansion plans.” One year on, where has the company invested to meet growth targets?
- How was the IPO structured via a SPAC?
- What is Meridiam’s position in the company now?
- How has the growth strategy been implemented?
- Which types of assets are Allego looking at to expand their European footprint?
Networking lunch
Panel: Floating offshore wind coming of age
Interest in floating offshore wind across Europe is booming. Following the huge amount of capacity awarded in the ScotWind leasing auctions, developers are racing to prepare projects for large new tenders coming up in France, Norway, Spain, Portugal and Italy. But turning gigawatt-scale ambitions into reality remains challenging, as investors and governments grapple with supply chain restrictions, price instability and technology risk. This panel will discuss whether the asset class has matured enough for investment.
- Has floating technology developed enough to be investable on a commercial scale? Are industry standards starting to emerge for floating platform solutions?
- Can the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of floating wind continue to come down at a time of rising inflation? How close are we getting to fixed-bottom LCOE? Can adding hydrogen production elements revolutionise floating wind’s economics?
- How supportive are the upcoming European tenders for commercial scale floating wind? Are two-way CfDs being effectively used across jurisdictions, and can developers consider merchant projects as a viable option?
- What bottlenecks are developers and investors facing amid supply chain disruptions, staff shortages and lengthy planning procedures? Are certain countries such as Ireland, which has seen big players pull out of offshore wind projects, facing more complex challenges?
- Is there enough investment in the grid to ensure that new floating projects can be connected in a timely manner?
- Do oil and gas companies have an edge in the floating market, given their long experience in deep waters?
- How is financing evolving after the first pilot deals in Portugal, Scotland and France? How deep is the non-recourse debt market for floating offshore?
Panel: Battery storage investing comes of age
The UK’s battery sector is the most mature in Europe, but it is fast evolving into one dominated by energy trading arbitrage rather than services. Are investors prepared for the change and is continental Europe on their radar?
- Amidst delays in getting battery cells and grid connections, is the UK still on track to sufficiently ramp up battery storage supply?
- Are investors locating batteries correctly to leverage the growing opportunity for trading energy in the wholesale markets?
- As batteries grow in size is there a sufficiently liquid market of investors to buy development stage or built assets?
- With just a small handful of lenders in the battery sector, will debt plug the gap in financing ever bigger projects?
- Is the continental European battery market on your radar as the UK sector matures, and if so where and why?
Networking break
Panel: Preparing EFW for the next stage
Investors have piled into the EfW market with a plan to decarbonise assets, expand them and potentially sell them to pension funds down the line. With sourcing scarce material becoming a headache, EfW owners are also targeting traditional waste businesses with a view to integrating them.
- Where is the sector at in terms of fees, accessing waste and generating revenues from selling electricity?
- Are pension funds likely buyers of EfW assets in the future given they are polluting assets? Or will they be fully decarbonised through CCS, enabling institutional investors buy such assets en masse?
- Is regulation supportive of CCS as an investment opportunity?
- Given parts of the UK particularly in the north and Scotland have a lot of EfW plants, are there still opportunities for greenfield EfW developments?
- Is there an opportunity for UK EfW platforms to further consolidate and become pan-continental?
- Is co-locating adjacent sector assets such as solar PV and batteries alongside EfW assets an opportunity for investors.
- What is driving the current appetite among some investors for waste management, such as Macquarie’s takeover of Beauparc?
Panel: Investing in the renewable energy supply chain and interdependencies
The renewables sector has many interdependencies that contribute to renewable energy production including vessels, ports, and interconnections to turbines to ensure that energy reaches the grid. Expert consultants have identified assets that are currently underinvested in, and this lack of investment will lead to delays in renewable energy production. Panellists will review supply chain investment opportunities and challenges.
- Is enough resource being allocated to develop interdependencies such as connections to turbines, underwater pipes, and storage to enable Europe to meet renewable energy goals?
- How might policy and regulation changes hinder or help developers to resource the necessary projects?
- What are the investment opportunities and challenges? Are independent investors having to fund developing the whole supply chain?
- What is the merchant risk when reviewing projects for development? How can information transparency support investment cases?
Conference close and networking drinks
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Alex joined Inframation as a greenfield analyst in May 2018, becoming head of data analysis in March 2022. He previously worked for risk consultancy AKE International and as an analyst and editor for political risk publication Global Risk Insights, specialising in Southeast Asian political affairs. He completed his PhD in geography and politics at Newcastle University in 2016.
Akshay is responsible for the economic regulation of Great Britain’s energy networks. This includes the development of the next generation of onshore network price controls called RIIO2, the regulation of offshore transmission infrastructure, and the delivery of an ambitious cross-border interconnection programme through the cap and floor regime.
Prior to joining Ofgem, Akshay was on secondment from HM Treasury to Transport for London, where he led TfL’s work on funding transport infrastructure in London by capturing the uplift in land and property values associated with transport projects such as Barking Riverside Extension, Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo Line Extension.
This followed a spell of five years at HM Treasury, where Akshay directed energy and transport projects for Infrastructure UK. He has been involved in the design and delivery of electricity market reform, the competition for carbon capture and storage, the development of the new nuclear energy programme, the reform of the strategic roads network and regeneration projects such as the Northern Line extension to Battersea Power Station in London.
Akshay studied economics, finance, management, and bioscience, at the London School of Economics, the universities of London and Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Management.
Kai Rintala is the Managing Director of Taaleri Energia, a Helsinki-based renewables fund manager and developer. He is responsible for a 2.8GW portfolio of development, construction and operational assets for the Taaleri SolarWind funds. Kai has more than 20 years of experience in the infrastructure industry, having previously worked for KPMG in Helsinki and London, advising public and private sector clients on infrastructure strategy and transactions across energy, transport and social infrastructure.
Edward joined Amber Infrastructure in 2017 and focuses on the origination of investment opportunities in Energy and Transportation. Prior to Amber, Edward was part of the investment team of First Reserve, a private fund manager dedicated to investments in the global energy and energy infrastructure sectors. Edward started his career in the Corporate Finance division of Deutsche Bank where he advised clients across Europe on mergers and acquisitions, asset disposals and capital markets transactions in the utility and infrastructure sectors.
Hernan joined Actis in 2019 as part of the Energy and Infrastructure Operations team. Since joining, Hernan has been a team member on a number of Energy and Infrastructure deals and has provided support to platform management on matters, such as construction of thermal and renewables projects, acquisition due diligence and contract negotiations. Hernan also sits on the Technical Steering Committees of a number of portfolio companies, including Azura, Saavi, Atlas and Echoenergia.
Prior to joining Actis, Hernan worked at Pampa Energia for eight years, the largest integrated energy company in Argentina, where he worked as Engineering Manager for the New Ventures Department and Deputy Project Manager on several thermal and renewable power plants projects.
Hernan holds two BSc degrees with honours on Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires and an MBA with honours from the London Business School.
Marie Espitalier-Noel is Funding and Financing Manager at Hydrogen Europe. She is in charge of monitoring funding opportunities, improving the bankability of low carbon hydrogen projects throughout the value chain, and fostering private investment in hydrogen projects. She is a Board member at the African Hydrogen Partnership. Prior to joining HE, Marie worked as Senior Associate for a CVC fund within which she oversaw the Renewable energy investment portfolio in Africa and France. She also launched the subsidiary of a leading impact fund in Australia in partnership with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Marie holds a Master of Corporate Finance from Paris School of Business and a Master of International Economics and Market Finance from University of Queensland, Australia.
Tim joined the business in 2012 and has more than 20 years of relevant experience. Tim is the Head of the Global Infrastructure Debt business and the portfolio manager of a number of the firm’s debt mandates. He is the Chair of the Debt Investment Committee and a member of the firm’s global Executive Committee.
Prior to joining the firm, Tim worked in senior banking roles at Westpac in Sydney and London. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Master of Business from the University of Otago and a Master of Business Administration from the London Business School.
Dipak Haria is a member of the Infrastructure Debt Group of BlackRock Alternative Investors (BAI). He is responsible for the origination, structuring, and execution of Infrastructure Debt products in Europe. Dipak has 18 years of experience in infrastructure and energy project finance, a significant portion of which includes renewable energy debt investments. Prior to joining BlackRock in 2014, Dipak was part of the Renewable Energy team at Santander, and before that, within the Infrastructure and Project Finance team at Barclays
Sujoy joined Shinsei International Limited, a subsidiary of Shinsei Bank, Limited in 2019, having previously worked at Santander Bank. At Shinsei International, Sujoy is responsible for the Bank's deal sourcing, advising and international syndication & distribution activities in the renewables, infrastructure, real estate, aircraft and shipping sector. In this role, he has been instrumental in the development of the Bank’s international investments platform and originate to distribute model.
Over ten years of experience in project finance, both debt advisory and arranging project finance transactions. For the past seven years, much of his focus has been on the Global renewables & infrastructure market. While working alongside major equity players, developers, funds as well as with a variety of commercial banks, export credit agencies and institutional investors, he has built a strong experience in the syndication, structuring, advising and negotiations of large and complex project finance transactions globally.
Julien joined Meridiam in 2011. He serves as a Partner and Corporate Development Director, with current responsibility over the development and deployment of Meridiam Transition, a €485m large low carbon energy transition and Europe-focused investment fund.
At the global level, he is responsible for the operational strategy of the group, in charge of designing and implementing new developments as well as monitor the group’s operational performance. In this capacity, he led the strategic development of Meridiam in Africa and sits at the investment committee of Meridiam Africa Infrastructure Fund.
Julien is also chairing the board of Allego.
Prior to joining Meridiam, Julien worked at the French Ministry of Finance’s Agence des Participations de l’État, where he was responsible for managing the French Government’s shareholding in Électricité de France (EDF). Prior to this, Julien was the Deputy Head of the European Affairs Division of the French Treasury. He also worked for Veolia Transport and the infrastructure division of Proparco, the French Development Finance Institution.
He teaches Energy Regulations at Sciences-Po Paris and is a Millenium Fellow of the Atlantic Council. He is also a contributor to several international think tanks or public organizations in the energy transition and infrastructure sectors.
Julien holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering, a Master’s Degree in Environmental and Energy Economics and a Master of Public Affairs from the École des Ponts in Paris.
I am the senior ECM editor at Ion Analytics working on producing equity capital markets intelligence for Dealogic and Mergermarket.
Leo joined the UK civil service in 2014, where he has held several roles including a period working in the office of the minister for energy and climate change. He has been with the renewable power team since 2019, where he has delivered transformational investments in the UK’s offshore wind supply chain via the Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme. He now heads the Floating Wind Programme, aiming to scale up and accelerate deployment and foster the wider development of the sector in the UK.
Joined Hexicon in 2015.
Lead the divestment of Hexicon’s project rights in Scotland and the acquisition of a site in Cornwall, as well as initiated Hexicon’s first project in Ireland. Previous experience includes onshore solar, wind & biomass M&A and setting-up a supply chain venture capital fund.
Education: MSc in Sea Use & Marine Policy Physics – London School of Economics
Shareholdings: 3,700,871 through related parties
Warrants: 1,000,000
Clément is a founder of Green Giraffe and heads the London office, which he founded in 2011 and returned to after heading the Paris office in 2017-2019.
He coordinates Green Giraffe’s efforts in floating offshore wind and has led multiple transactions in offshore and onshore wind, both on the equity and debt side. He led the Walney offshore wind debt financing (367 MW, United Kingdom, 2012), the Rentel offshore wind senior and mezzanine debt raising (309 MW, Belgium, 2016), and the Alizé onshore wind portfolio sale (71 MW, France, 2017). Most recently, Clément closed six development funding transactions in floating offshore wind in California (700 MW, 2018), Hawaii (500 MW, 2018), South Korea (>500 MW, 2019), the United Kingdom (380 MW, 2020), Italy (200 MW, 2020) and Ireland (1,000 MW, 2021).
He developed Green Giraffe’s offtake advisory expertise and supervised the sourcing of all its European renewable energy electricity for a large international corporation.
Before founding Green Giraffe, Clément worked at Dexia in Paris in 2008-10 within the project finance team. Prior to that, he spent a year in Beijing at AFD in 2006-07.
He graduated from Ecole des Ponts ParisTech and holds an MSc in project finance from Université Paris X.
Dr Robyn Lucas is the Director of Analytics at Modo Energy, where she leads a team in producing benchmarks, forecasts, and market analysis for utility-scale battery energy storage. Robyn has been working in energy storage since 2016, previously Head of Data Science at Open Energi and at Limejump. She read physics at the University of Oxford and holds a physics Ph.D. from Imperial College London.
Nathan has spent the last 8 years delivering value in energy and storage solutions across the U.K. and USA. As Engineering Manager at Pivot Power, he is leading our technical procurement for new energy storage systems.
Prior to joining Pivot Power, Nathan managed Solarcentury’s residential solar & storage portfolio for IKEA, Solease and Nissan to deploy solar over 5,000 rooftops across Western Europe. Previously, Nathan worked as a technical business developer for Siemens supporting energy savings solutions for industrial end-users and renewable energy manufacturers.
Nathan holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a degree in Sustainable Energy Futures from Imperial College London.
Martin joined IDCM in September 2021 to head up the M&A practice. Martin has extensive M&A experience across the energy and infrastructure sectors, having spent 14 years in the industry, at DC Advisory and Macquarie Capital.
Martin brings expertise in originating and executing mid-market transactions for infrastructure investors, private equity funds and developers of infrastructure assets. Although Martin focuses on originating off-market transactions for his clients, he also has a proven track record of winning competitive buy-side processes. His know-how of bidding strategies, knowledge of valuation approaches used by different types of investors and deal structuring have benefited many of his clients.
Martin holds Masters Degrees from Brandeis International Business School and INSEAD University.
After graduating with a Masters in Chemistry from Oxford University Julia joined Iona Capital’s investments team in 2011 and in 2015 completed her Masters in Finance degree from LBS.
Julia is heavily involved in driving investments to completion through negotiations and takes on going transitional roles sitting on asset boards. Her main focus is energy from waste infrastructure in the UK.
Lekan Omoniwa is an Associate Director at Equitix with a focus on the environmental services sector (ESS) which encompasses energy from waste, biofuel, biomass power, and emerging technologies such as hydrogen and CCUS. Lekan holds directorships on a number of operational and under-construction assets and is involved in some of the most complex assets managed by Equitix. Lekan has over 15 years of experience in the renewables, utilities and energy sectors. Prior to joining Equitix in 2020, Lekan worked at Arup, Fichtner, and Mott MacDonald where he was involved in a number of high-profile deals in the UK, Europe, and across the globe as technical and commercial advisor to developers, investors and lenders.
David has been with ABN AMRO since 2017 helping to re-establish the UK Project Finance team, following six years with the UK Green Investment Bank, focussing primarily on projects in the energy transition and digital infrastructure sectors. Whilst at ABN AMRO David has secured a number of mandates for lead arranger roles in the EfW sector including Earlsgate, Newhurst, Protos, Kelvin and Westfield as well as participation in senior loans for Kemsley, Ferrybridge and KKR’s acquisition of Viridor.
PhD qualified, with 17 years industry experience, Peter has pioneered a variety of tools and techniques, including Adjacent Turbine Modelling, Response Deficit Analysis, Modified Weibull Scaling, Transience Analysis for fatigue load evaluation, and digitisation of wind conditions to render them compatible with sophisticated models using scanning lidar. He is a member of the maintenance team for IEC 61400-12-1 (power performance testing), the project teams for IEC 61400-50-3 (floating lidar) and IEC 61400-15 (wind resource and site suitability assessment), the advisory board of IEA Wind Task 32 (lidar), and a variety of other industry bodies. Peter has undertaken detailed forensic analysis of GWs of wind assets, from individual turbines to utility scale installations, both onshore and offshore, and strongly advocates integrated digital workflows with unified data requirements for the earliest possible access to the best possible insights, to support through-life optimisation and allow the visibility and mitigation of risk.
Lawrence Slade joined GIIA as CEO in January 2020, having most recently been Chief Executive of Energy UK since 2015. He has been involved in the energy industry since the late 1990’s working in countries all over the world. Lawrence is a member of the UK Government’s Committee on Fuel Poverty, an Advisory Board member of Connected Kerb, a Board Trustee and Audit Committee member of the Money Advice Trust (who run the National Debtline and Business Debtline), and is also a Fellow of the Energy Institute.
Terence is an experienced corporate finance professional with over 18 years of corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions experience. Terence joins from the EY’s Corporate Finance Advisory team where he focused on the infrastructure space. Terence was also recently the Head of Investments at Scotia Gas Networks where he looked at investments across the utilities and transport space.