28th March, 2024
The UK’s biggest water utility, Thames Water, which is two-thirds owned by state-owned investors, looks set to be renationalized – at least temporarily – after its shareholders refused to throw it a financial lifeline.
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6th February, 2024
A coalition of state-owned investors from across the world has thrown its weight behind Generate Capital in a US$1.5 billion fundraise, which boosted the sustainable infrastructure frontrunner’s funding for new projects and technologies. Existing state-owned investors from Australia, QIC and Australian Super, boosted their existing investments, while new investors included the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) and Australia’s HESTA. The fundraise brings the total raised since 2014 to US$10 billion. It is not unusual for Australian pension funds to co-invest, as well as draw in peers from other countries. The renewables and sustainability sector is notable in seeing a high level of convergence of state-owned investors (SOIs) in transactions. Generate Capital claimed it produced over 320GWh of sustainable power by September 2023. It is heavily concentrated in the US, particularly California, which may have drawn CalSTRS’s interest. Yet, the significant weight of Australian SOIs, acting together, suggests a potential domestic interest. Australia’s green hydrogen sector has already attracted billions of SOI capital and Generate Capital could focus increasingly on Australia’s resources. However, its ethos chimes well with the long-term objectives of a large section of the SOI universe and the platform could see other heavyweight investors pile capital into its projects. Alliances in green energy have been led by Singapore’s GIC while its sister organization Temasek focused on start-ups with new technology to advance renewables, batteries and low carbon industrial processes. Gulf funds also focused both on strategic investment in domestic renewables capacities and on yield-generating assets abroad, with Mubadala leading the way through the Masdar platform as well as directly. The interest in green hydrogen is high, as it could provide the feedstock for ammonia and methanol production and revive the chemicals chain, while being de-linked from the oil and gas sectors. GIC backed a major green ammonia plant in India, partnered with co-investors in Australia’s hydrogen sector, snapped up a stake in InterContinental Energy, and joined Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners in backing a green bond issue by TagEnergy of up to US$ 0.6 billion to fund renewables and battery storage in Australia, the UK and Europe. Bio-based fuels also drew interest, with OTPP committing US$ 0.3 billion to a JV with Sevana Bioenergy to develop renewable natural gas projects utilizing organic waste; and Mubadala’s Acelen using its Mataripe refinery site in Brazil as host to an innovative US$ 2.5 billion push into cleaner aviation fuel from oils derived from soybean, palm and macauba oils. Instead of simply divesting carbon intensive assets, Canadian PPFs have looked to greening them. CPP partnered with IKAV to acquire Aera Energy, which represents 25% of California’s oil and gas production with a view to expanding its renewable energy portfolio. All in all, Sovereign Investors invested, once again, more in the so-called green assets than in the so-called black assets in 2023, reaching a historical maximum of US$ 26.1 billion in the support to companies related to the energy transition, including renewable energy, battery storage and electric vehicles. Gulf SWFs were responsible for almost half of that figure, and are pushing the energy transition agenda and recycling revenues from black assets into green impact investments, particularly in their own backyards. Canadian, European, Singaporean, and Australian funds are also freeing up plenty of dry powder to plunge capital into achieving their net zero ambitions, with the rest of the funds set to join them in co-investments.
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3rd January, 2024
The Thames Water debacle has burned the fingers of state-owned investors who had backed the privatized water utility, in the belief infrastructure assets in a stable, well-regulated market like the UK were a safe bet.
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28th June, 2023
The biggest crisis in the UK’s utilities sector has engulfed the country’s biggest water firm, Thames Water, and is challenging the consortium of owners to cough up capital to prevent its collapse.
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6th June, 2023
The ongoing public unease over sewage pollution in Britain’s rivers is fuelling calls for renationalization of the country’s water utilities, challenging the interests of Asian sovereign wealth funds and Canadian public pension funds.
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26th November, 2021
The approval of the A$5.2 billion (US$3.7 billion) takeover of Spark Infrastructure by a consortium of private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) and PSP Investments marks the latest acquisition involving Canadian public pension funds, who have emerged as the leading foreign investors in Australian infrastructure.
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28th September, 2021
The merger of Australia’s QSuper and Sunsuper creates the country’s second biggest public pension fund with AUM of US$152 billion and two million members, sending the combined entity up the global league table to 22nd place, between Denmark’s ATP and behind Canada’s BCI and PSP Investments.
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2nd August, 2021
The infrastructure arm of Ontario’s public employees pension fund OMERS has taken a chunk of Indian renewables producer Azure Power, which is majority owned by Québec’s CDPQ. Yet, Global SWF research finds that state-owned investors are increasingly reticent about risks in the Indian renewables market, while at the same time they are being lured to developed markets where opportunities are opening up in energy transition.
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