UAE’s state-owned renewable energy company Masdar will take final investment decisions later this year on the company’s first UK battery projects, CFO Niall Hannigan recently told S&P Global Commodity Insights in an interview.
The UK is a strategic market for Masdar, with the company involved in fixed and floating offshore wind projects and targeting 1 GW plus of battery storage via Masdar Arlington.
“In acquiring Arlington, we acquired the skill sets in a complex market. In the UK these first projects are standalone, but across the portfolio our more recent projects seek to co-locate battery assets with intermittent solar or wind plants,” he said.
For instance, Masdar recently won a tender for a 250-MW solar project with integrated battery storage in the Bukhara region of Uzbekistan.
Elsewhere, Masdar was developing offshore wind in Germany and would look to take that knowledge to the US and Asia, while onshore renewables would continue to be developed in Southern Europe, down into the Balkans and into Eastern Europe.
“To get to 100 GW you need access to capital, capabilities and opportunities,” Hannigan said.
Masdar recently tapped into the global green finance market mid-July with a $750 million, 10-year green bond offering on the London Stock Exchange which was more than five times oversubscribed.
“The green bond allows us to tap into a completely new pool of liquidity for greenfield wind, solar and battery projects, many of which are located in developing or climate-challenged economies,” Hannigan said.
A key theme at recent UN climate summits, dominating COP28 in Dubai, is the inequality in global north-south financing, the CFO noted.
“Green bonds have a significant role to play here, but you also have to look at how you can bring more liquidity to developing markets where investors have traditionally been absent,” Hannigan said.
Also published on Medium.
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