We know Aware Super already staked AVL partner, North Harbour Clean Energy for whom our ‘new recruit’ Steve Banning worked for six years with a [cornerstone investment]
Re visit a relevant AwareSuper linked in post on NHCE CellCube partnership [here].
Does AVL fit into any of this?
Maybe,..
Here’s a reminder that last November whilst in Perth; [ref]
“… Aware Super chief investment officer Damian Graham said critical minerals and battery production was a “big, big area of opportunity”, particularly as governments worked to support industry. “Critical minerals is a really interesting dynamic and WA’s fantastically placed for a lot of that,” he said in an interview while in Perth last week.
“But a lot of the old, traditional commodities are important for that transition as well — you think of copper and nickel and tin and aluminium, not just (those) newer-focused. What happens in lithium ... in vanadium, there’s a really interesting dynamic building up there.“
Exclusive Aware Super has $2b green plan to dodge energy grid logjam Angela Macdonald-SmithSenior resources writer
Oct 18, 2023 – 5.00am
Aware Super expects to invest up to $2 billion in small-scale solar and batteries through a partnership with privately owned Birdwood Energy.
The investment will be in a distributed energy platform that would dodge the transmission logjam, which is putting a brake on the transition to renewables.
The $160 billion pension fund has made an initial commitment of $300 million to the platform but expects its investment to reach at least five times that figure.
In the race to reach net zero emissions, growth is taking off in smaller renewables and storage projects that can connect to the existing distribution grid.
The investment is thought to be the first by an Australian superannuation fund into the distributed energy sector, which is typically difficult for institutional investors to access because of the multitude of smaller companies and projects involved.
“We see a very deep pipeline [of projects], of $1.5 [billion] to $2 billion,” said Aware Super infrastructure portfolio manager Jiren Zhou.
He said the fund had more than $2 billion invested in large-scale energy transition and renewables projects, mostly utility-scale wind, and wanted to diversify while remaining with the transition theme. Mr Zhou said the Birdwood platform would allow Aware to invest in smaller projects that could be deployed faster and would have lower development risk and quicker grid connections, all augmented by battery storage.
Birdwood, which attracted UK-based investor Victory Hill into a separate partnership last year, has acquired two operating solar farms west of Adelaide for the platform that will be funded by Aware, and it is adding battery storage to this. Also included is a commercial renewable asset finance business called Juice Capital Energy, which has 400 customers at present, and 10 grid solar and battery projects in development.
“Distributed energy, which we see will get to up to 60 per cent of generation, is a faster, cheaper way to get to net zero,” Birdwood founder and CEO Scott McGregor said, pointing to its engineering and construction experience to get clean energy projects unlocked and capital deployed at scale. Faster transition
“Everyone talks about this pipeline that can’t be unlocked in Australia. This is a way to unlock it. It should hopefully provide one channel to get to net zero ... which is faster and cheaper,” he said.
“We all want to be part of getting this achieved as fast as possible with existing technology.”
Australia’s rollout of clean energy generation, needed to meet renewables and emissions targets, is being hampered by the slow construction of new transmission required to connect remote wind and solar farms. Several renewables developers are looking to connect projects directly to the distribution grid to get around the problem, amid estimates of up to 10 gigawatts of untapped capacity on NSW’s grid alone.
Mr Zhou said NSW distributor Essential Energy had estimated an extra 2.5GW of capacity could go on its network, and Ausgrid had carried out similar studies on the grid in the broader Sydney region. He said South Australia’s SA Power Networks had led the market with efficient low-cost grid connections for projects.
Aware’s head of infrastructure, Mark Hector, said the investment was consistent with its strategy to increase its exposure to the energy transition by diversifying into distributed renewable power and storage while generating “strong risk-adjusted returns”.
Mr Zhou said Aware expected to earn returns from the platform of 50-100 basis points above those from large-scale renewable generation, where projects were more competitively bid as they were easier to access. Projects would not be fully contracted in terms of their output and so would be able to capture upside from what was expected to be a volatile wholesale market through the transition.
The initial $300 million is expected to be deployed over the next one to two years. Mr Hector said the Australian Energy Market Operator had forecast the need for 46GW of dispatchable storage by 2050 to provide stability to the grid as intermittent renewable generation was developed.
“With only 2.7GW of energy storage in the National Electricity Market, the proposition of the Birdwood platform is compelling for our members,” he said.
Just a few bits of curated information in case it ever becomes relevant.
Meanwhile I guess someone will come along with funding sooner or later?
Patient cheers
AVL Price at posting:
1.6¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)