New Delhi : Opening a big window of investment in India’s renewable energy projects, global wealth and pension funds are going to invest in the $1-billion equity fund to be set by the Indian government.
According to government officials, the fund, envisaged during the climate change discussions at the Paris Summit late last year, will be managed by a renowned global investment manager.
“We will soon issue a request for proposal (RfP) to select a suitable investment manager. The corpus is huge, so we are looking for an agency that can spike interest from the largest and best of the wealth or pension funds from across the globe,” said a senior official in the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE).
The RfP will be issued by the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency, the financing arm of MNRE and one of the key lenders to the clean-energy sector.
Senior officials confirmed the development, saying proceedings for issuing an RfP were underway. The selection of suitable project would be done by the investment manager, who would, on the basis of several parameters, decide the project with best returns.
The $1-billion equity fund is for both old projects looking for refinance or sell-off and the new ones that will come up. With it being an equity fund, consolidation is likely to hit the sector with solar projects awarded under the first phase of the National Solar Mission in 2010-2012 looking for a change of ownership, said market experts. Most small wind power players who have put their projects on sale can benefit from this fund.
Business Standard had reported earlier that a dozen or more solar and wind projects were scouting for fresh funding of up to $3 billion. Close to a dozen companies are looking for fresh funding, preferably equity in the projects that are either under construction or have been constructed. The companies are hopeful of drawing interest of global private equity firms.
“In the next 12 to 18 months, the industry is expecting close to 10,000 Mw of renewable power projects to be constructed. Fresh projects, especially solar, are already lined up for the same period.
@Based bon reports in Business Standard.
