Greencoat's USD 5bn US renewables push includes staffing uptick in coming years

UK-based renewable investment firm Greencoat Capital intends to increase its US staff to 10 by the end of 2023 after it announced plans to make a massive investment stateside.

Greencoat plans to invest USD 5bn in the United States over the next five years.

This will include growing its team to 10 staffers in Chicago and New York from its current level of 3. The new hires are expected to focus largely on asset management, said partner Laurence Fumagalli said in an interview with NPM.

“So that's just based on our experience of growing these teams, generally. We started with the UK wind team, that's how it grew. We then ended up with a UK solar team, that's how it grew. And a UK bioenergy team, that's how it grew. And we set up our Euro team, that's how it grew,” Fumagalli said.

The news comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that Greencoat would be launching its formal US operations, after it started making deals stateside earlier this year.

In January, it was announced that Greencoat had acquired a USD 160m, 24% stake in an 861 MW portfolio comprised of RWE Renewables’ Stella, Cranell, East Raymond and West Raymond wind farms in coastal south Texas. Also, this year, the firm announced the acquisition of an 80% stake in a 405 MW Illinois wind portfolio. The two investments this year total USD 500m.

Overseeing those plans are David Boyce, selected to head Greencoat’s US operations. Joining Boyce are Coen Weddepohl, who will head U.S. investor relations and business development, and Saad Qais, who will head asset management. Ciaran O’Brien will continue as chair for Greencoat’s US business.

“Where we typically see the biggest growth in personnel as the business expands is in that asset management function,” Fumagalli said. “Because at the end of the day, you only have a certain throughput in terms of investments you're making, and a certain throughput in terms of how many investors you're talking to. That's like a fixed quantity, but as you add more and more assets and you wake up 10 years later, and you've got 200 assets, you need a very big team to look after those properly.”

Greencoat’s official entry into the US market comes at an “inflection point” for the renewables industry in the country.

Fumagalli attributed this to the maturity of the asset class, or the “sheer amount” of operational solar and wind, as well as the general acceptance of the assets among investors. He also pointed to investor appetite and the increase in growth aspirations from, not just the U.S. government, but the “global … climate apparatus,” which will inevitably require more deployment.

“What all of this means is that the people who've hitherto been developing and deploying assets, which could be utilities, or they could be specialist developers, do not have the balance sheets between them to deal with the sudden increase in the growth,” Fumagalli said. “And so, you've got this beautiful confluence of supply and demand.”

Fumagalli said Europe was at a similar point when Greencoat listed its first infrastructure fund — the first of its kind in the world, he said — in the UK in 2013.

“All of that we saw happening five to 10 years ago in Europe,” he said. “And we built a business on the back of that. We see it happening now in the States.”