Green electricity retailer Zen Energy to provide power for 14 ISPT properties from 2025

Zen Energy has inked a six-year agreement with a leading property fund manager to power its southeast Queensland assets.

Green electricity retailer Zen Energy, which is raising about $150m for a pipeline of projects, has partnered with property fund manager ISPT.

As part of a six-year partnership with ISPT, the Bluegrass Solar Farm, in Chinchilla in Queensland’s western Downs region, will supply energy to 14 of ISPT’s retail, office and industrial sites – including Brisbane’s Central Plaza and the Wintergarden shopping centre in the Brisbane CBD – from 2025.

Zen Energy has been operating for almost two decades.

The Bluegrass Solar Farm, developed by leading global energy provider X-ELIO, officially opened in November 2022.

As well as Zen Energy, first tier offtakes of the solar farm include Salesforce and Stanwell Corporation.

The ISPT properties are in Brisbane, Ipswich and the Sunshine and Gold coasts.

The deal will see the fund manager’s greenhouse emissions reduce by 14,630 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year.

Brisbane’s Wintergarden shopping centre.

This was the equivalent of planting 241,908 seedlings every year and allowing them to grow for 10 years.

ISPT chief sustainability officer Steven Peters said the agreement built on similar power purchasing agreements thew company had in place in Victoria, NSW and the ACT.

“When the agreement commences, 90 per cent of the electricity needs across our entire portfolio will come from renewables – putting us close to achieving our goal of being 100 per cent powered by renewables by 2025,” he said.

The deal comes after Zen Energy, which was once backed by steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta and now counts economist Ross Garnaut as a director, locked in $54m in fresh debt funding.

The capital raising, managed by West Australian property developer Hesperia and ASX-listed Income Asset Management, is the first tranche of around $150m that Zen Energy is aiming to raise for its pipeline of ­projects.

Zen Energy was founded almost two decades ago, and in 2015 Dr Garnaut joined the company’s board.

The company merged with Mr Gupta’s SIMEC Energy in 2017, although in 2020 he sold his share back to Mr Garnaut.

In the five years since Zen Energy obtained its electricity retail licence it has gained a number of key clients, including the South Australian government, CSIRO’s sites in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT, and the Southern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, which comprises twenty-five local councils in NSW.

Originally published as Green electricity retailer Zen Energy to provide power for 14 ISPT properties from 2025