A wind farm investor wants to raise €250m in a float on the Irish Stock Exchange
Greencoat Renewables intends to buy more wind farms in the Republic with the funding.
A WIND FARM investment firm plans to raise up to €250 million in a float on the Dublin and London junior stock exchanges.
Greencoat Renewables said it intends to use the money from listing on the Irish ESM and UK-based AIM to add to its portfolio of wind farms in the Republic.
The company will be managed by UK-based Greencoat Capital, which also controls a major portfolio of wind farms in the UK market.
In March, the company bought wind farms in counties Cork and Tipperary with a combined capacity of 137 MW from developer Brookfield using funding from the state’s Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) and AIB.
As part of its listing notification today, Greencoat Renewables said that “over time” it plans to buy operating wind and solar farms in other eurozone countries, including Belgium, Finland, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
The company said both the ISIF and AIB had made conditional commitments to invest up to €105 million as part of its capital-raising efforts.
Greencoat Renewables would be the first renewable energy infrastructure firm to list on the Irish Stock Exchange.
The company noted that it expected Ireland to have 4.3 GW of total onshore wind capacity by 2020.
The country currently relies on on wind farms for the vast majority of its renewable energy-sourced electricity.
It is one of only four EU member states currently expected to miss its agreed renewable energy targets, with demand for power increasing due to the growing economy and widespread development of data centres.
Greencoat Capital’s investment manager, Bertrand Gautier, said the Irish renewable energy market “offers a compelling opportunity” thanks to the country’s “abundant wind resource”.
