Gloogle Blog, January 9, 2013
In late
December, while most of us were busy wrapping presents, our Treasury team was
tying a bow on our most recent renewable energy deal: an approximately $200
million equity investment in a wind farm in west Texas that generates enough
energy to power more than 60,000 average U.S. homes.
Spinning
Spur Wind Project is located in Oldham County, a wide open, windy section of
the Texas Panhandle located about 35 miles from Amarillo. The 161 megawatt
facility was built by renewable energy developer EDF Renewable Energy, a
veteran in the industry that has overseen more than 50 other clean energy
projects. Spinning Spur’s 70 2.3 MW Siemens turbines started spinning full time
just before the end of the year, and the energy they create has been contracted
to SPS, a utility that primarily serves Texas and New Mexico.
We look for
projects like Spinning Spur because, in addition to creating more renewable
energy and strengthening the local economy, they also make for smart
investments: they offer attractive returns relative to the risks and allow us
to invest in a broad range of assets. We’re also proud to be the first investor
in an EDF Renewable Energy project that is not a financial institution, as we
believe that corporations can be an important new source of capital for the
renewable energy sector.
Spinning
Spur joins 10 other renewable energy investments we’ve made since 2010, several
of which hit significant milestones in the past year:
- The Atlantic Wind Connection received permission to begin permitting, an important step in advancing the construction of the United States’ first offshore backbone electric transmission system (more in this new video).
- Shepherds Flat, one of the world’s largest wind farms with a capacity of 845 MW, became fully operational in October.
- The Ivanpah project, which is more than 75 percent complete and employs 2,000+ people, recently installed its 100,000th heliostat, a kind of mirror (more in this new video).
- Just yesterday (PDF), the fourth and final phase of Recurrent Energy's 88MW solar installation in Sacramento County, Calif., reached commercial operation.
Altogether,
the renewable energy projects we’ve invested in are capable of generating 2
gigawatts of power. To give a better sense of what that really means, we came
up with some comparisons :
Here’s to a
clean, renewable 2013!
Posted by
Kojo Ako-Asare, Senior Manager, Corporate Finance
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