The Australian Renewables Income Fund (AIRF) was launched by Infrastructure Capital Group (ICG) which only recently launched the fund.
A record investment of $100 million from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is the largest equity investment in renewable energy to date, representing an almost 40 per cent increase in its renewable’s equity portfolio.
This capital commitment has increased the size of the fund to $540 making it one of the largest renewable energy funds in Australia.
ICG’s managing director Tom Laidlaw said that the renewables fund provides investors dedicated exposure to renewable energy assets.
“ARIF offers investors the benefits of expertise, diversification and scale in a fast growing and highly dynamic sector.
“With the additional capital, ARIF is well poised to further diversify the existing portfolio of high-quality investments with a number of prospective investments identified across a range of renewable energy technologies,” he said.
ICG’s chief investment officer Andrew Pickering said over the next 24–36 months there were over $5 billion-worth of wind and solar projects to create opportunities for investors.
“We are well placed to ensure that ARIF is able to source the highest quality opportunities in the market. We target successful outcomes for investors through quality asset selection and active asset management, capabilities acquired from decades working across every aspect of asset investment and operation,” he said.
The announcement comes at a time when Australia ranked in the bottom five of countries for its greenhouse gas emissions and with new data revealing that Australia’s emissions were at a record high and would miss its emission targets by 28 per cent.
