Taaleri Announces Second Close of SolarWind II Fund at EUR 275 Mn

The Taaleri SolarWind II fund, held a second closing in February 2020, with approximately EUR 275 million in commitments.

The Taaleri SolarWind II fund, the fifth renewable energy fund managed by Taaleri Energia Funds Management, held a second closing in February 2020, with approximately EUR 275 million in commitments. The second-close investors include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), institutional and high net worth investors, the Taaleri Group and the Taaleri Energia team.

EBRD will commit 10 percent at each closing, up to a maximum of EUR 40 million, via a newly established parallel fund, the Taaleri SolarWind II CEE fund. This parallel fund will invest alongside the main fund in investments in the Baltics, Poland and South-East Europe. With a significant number of institutional investors currently in active due diligence, it is expected that there will be continued strong demand in future closings.

The Taaleri SolarWind II fund has a target size of EUR 300 million and an agreed hard cap of EUR 400 million.

The fund invests in utility-scale wind and solar assets. The fund will invest in a diversified portfolio of predominantly ready-to-build assets in Europe (c.80 percent) and in the US (c.20 percent). It is estimated that it will finance approximately 850 MW of renewable energy capacity, which will offset over 1 million tonnes of CO₂ annually throughout the 25+ year lifetime of the assets.

“We are delighted to welcome EBRD to our fund. EBRD has a strong presence with considerable experience in renewable energy financing in its countries of operation. Together with our exclusive joint venture with Masdar, we feel that we have assembled a very strong team for this region. We have an extensive active deal pipeline across all of our target markets and have already completed the first two investments from the fund in ready-to-build onshore wind projects in Finland and Norway. We expect this investment pace to continue in 2020,” comments Kai Rintala, managing director, Taaleri Energia.

In January, we had reported that the Finnish wealth management group had announced that it had agreed to divest part of their wind farm investment portfolio by selling their shares in the 3 wind farms of Nyby and Myllykangas I and II in Finland to a consortium of Korean institutional investors.

The wind farms, Nyby (8 turbines), Myllykangas I (19 turbines) and Myllykangas II (3 turbines), are co-located some 55 km north of the city of Oulu and have a combined production capacity of 73.2 MW. The wind farms have been fully operational since 2015/2016 and together produce enough electricity to supply around 28,000 households and offset approximately 70,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.