Macquarie supersizes green energy output

Macquarie’s ‘green bank’ has seen its development pipeline swell to more than 30 gigawatts, as it moves into markets including India, the Philippines and France.

Macquarie’s Green Investment Group has a strong development pipeline, including offshore wind farm projects. Picture: Macquarie Group

Macquarie Group subsidiary the Green Investment Group has seen its development pipeline swell to more than 30 gigawatts, as it steps up growth plans and moves into markets including India, The Philippines and France.

The Green Investment Group focuses on making principal investments in green infrastructure and also gets involved in the project development, delivery, advisory and management of assets.

Green Investment Group’s global boss, Mark Dooley, said the unit’s volume growth in renewable energy came against the difficult backdrop of the pandemic and a shift towards creating more partnerships and development platforms. “Our global development pipeline has risen above 30 gigawatts – to put that in context, on the coldest day in winter, the UK’s peak demand is 50 gigawatts,” Mr Dooley said. “It’s pretty significant volume, that we’ve got out there now, that’s happening in old markets and new markets like India, The Philippines and France.”

The development pipeline was about 25 gigawatts a year ago.

Mr Dooley’s comments came at an online Macquarie green energy conference and as many world leaders prepare to attend the UN global climate conference in Glasgow from October 31.

But it will occur as parts of ­Europe confront energy shortages due to a sharp rise in demand following the depths of Covid-19, supply restrictions by oil producers and supply chain issues. India is also facing an energy shortage given rising demand and a shortage of coal.

But Macquarie is stepping up its ­efforts in renewable energy, as much of the world moves to lower carbon emissions and achieve net zero by 2050.

Macquarie Group CEO Shemara Wikramanayake. Picture: Britta Campion

The Green Investment Group’s progress report – for the 12 months ended to March 31 – highlighted the securing of rights to develop the UK’s 1.5 gigawatt Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind Farm and that it was setting up partnerships to vie for projects in Scotland, France and Norway. The unit also purchased its first utility-scale UK battery storage portfolio and launched a European solar development platform.

In an earlier conference session, Macquarie CEO Shemara Wikramanayake urged governments and business to rapidly accelerate the execution of climate and energy transition strategies.

Ms Wikramanayake believes the global pace of deploying renewables needs to ramp up from about 250 gigawatts a year to more than 1 terrawatt by 2030 as part of the transition to a net zero emission target. Mr Dooley said Green Investment Group was also keenly involved in assessing newer forms of green energy that could become “mainstream technologies” over the next decade.

Despite some fierce criticism of carbon capture and storage practices, he said the technology had “a really strong positioning”. It was getting support from large oil and gas companies seeking to neutralise the carbon impact of their activities, Mr Dooley said.

Macquarie and its consortium partners completed the controversial acquisition of the UK government’s Green Investment Bank for £2.3bn in 2017, after making a number of concessions to get the deal across the line.

Those included committing to £3bn of green energy investments, while also holding an annual industry day for stakeholders and publishing a report on green performance. Green Investment Bank was later rebranded to Green Investment Group, to ensure fewer legal and regulatory barriers.

This year’s Green Investment Group progress document was signed off by Deloitte in an independent assurance report.

“Based on our work as described in this report, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the assured ­disclosures, which have been ­prepared in accordance with the GIG Green Impact Reporting ­Criteria and Equator Principles Reporting Criteria, materially misstate the green impact,” ­Deloitte said.