Acquisition is among the company’s largest to date
PVTIME – On March 3, Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company LLC (“GREC” or “Greenbacker”), a leading owner and operator of sustainable infrastructure and energy efficiency projects, announced that, through a wholly owned subsidiary, it has purchased a 49% financial interest in the 150-MW operating Aurora solar portfolio from BlackRock Global Renewable Power Fund II (“BlackRock”). The portfolio, which comprises 16 solar projects in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, represents one of Greenbacker’s single largest acquisitions to date.
With this transaction, GREC continues to scale up its national clean energy investments and build out its presence in a state with a proven track record of supporting renewables. Over the last 15 years, renewable energy–generated electricity usage has increased from 6% to 24% in Minnesota,1 which has the goal of making renewables 25% of its total energy use by 2025.2
“Aurora represents a huge stride in expanding our presence in the renewable energy asset class,” said Charles Wheeler, CEO of GREC. “We’re very happy that our successful collaboration with BlackRock and Enel Green Power North America is contributing to Minnesota’s important clean energy goals, and we look forward to partnering with them again in the future.”
Aurora has a long-term power purchase agreement in place with a creditworthy offtake counterparty. Projects with high-credit-quality offtakers contribute to Greenbacker’s strategy of owning renewable energy assets with reliable long-term revenue. All of Aurora’s component projects reached commercial operation between the fourth quarter of 2016 and second quarter of 2017, and each has a clean power–generating capacity between five and 15 MWdc.
The project’s original developer, Enel Green Power North America, holds the remaining 51% majority ownership.
Greenbacker’s fleet of sustainable infrastructure projects comprises approximately 2.6 GW of generating capacity (including Aurora and assets that are to be constructed). Since 2016, Greenbacker’s real assets have produced approximately 3.4 million megawatt-hours3 of clean energy, abating 2.4 million metric tons of carbon.4 Today these projects support 3,200 green jobs.5
1 Governor Walz, Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, House and Senate DFL Energy Leads Announce Plan to Achieve 100 Percent Clean Energy in Minnesota by 2040, Minnesota state website, January 21, 2021.
2 State of Minnesota progress on clean energy goals published in Department of Commerce report, Minnesota state website, June 10, 2021.
3 Data is as of September 30, 2021.
4 Carbon abatement is calculated using the EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator which uses the AVoided Emissions and geneRation Tool (AVERT) US national weighted average CO2 marginal emission rate to convert reductions of kilowatt-hours into avoided units of carbon dioxide emissions. Data is as of September 30, 2021.
5 Green jobs are calculated from the International Renewable Energy Agency‘s measurement that one megawatt of renewable power supports 3.8 jobs. Data is as of September 30, 2021.
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