The European clean energy development platform of German investment manager Aquila Capital has solar & onshore wind heavy renewable energy project volume of 2.6 GW in Spain and Portugal for which it has raised an 'unprecedented' €1 billion construction facility.
The portfolio comprising over 50 projects is spread across Castilla y León, Comunidad Valenciana, Andalucía, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia, in Spain, and Setúbal, Coimbra, Evora, Leiria, in Portugal. Aquila Clean Energy EMEA targets to bring this capacity online over the next 3 years, expecting it to generate close to 5.3 TWh annually.
Construction facility raised comprises €600 million from a consortium of commercial banks, and €400 million credit from the European Investment Bank (EIB), supported by the European Union's (EU) investment program InvestEU.
BNP Paribas, ING, Intesa SanPaolo, Banco Sabadell, Santander, NatWest, and KfW IPEX-Bank also supported the facility. According to Aquila, the debt was significantly oversubscribed, confirming lenders' strong interest in the financing.
Of the total project volume of over €2 billion, remaining amount of €1 billion comes from Aquila Capital's own funds.
According to the European Commission (EC), the EU budget guarantee under InvestEU allows EIB to increase its risk-taking capacity. In this case, the bank will be able to assume electricity merchant risk under a non-recourse financing structure as the transaction does not involve any price hedge mechanism such as PPA'.
Around 91% of investments are expected to be located in the bank's cohesion priority regions that will support their economic recovery post COVID-19.
"We are extremely pleased being able to secure this landmark financing in a market environment which is marked by high inflation, rising interest rates, supply chain issues and the war in the Ukraine," said Aquila Clean Energy EMEA CEO Susanne Wermter. "This transaction constitutes the largest financing in the history of Aquila Clean Energy and Aquila Capital."