(London) – Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva plc, announces it has partnered with Astatine, an Irish energy infrastructure specialist, to establish a new industrial energy transition platform, targeting €800 million of investment, and aimed at supporting emission reductions in some of Europe’s most energy-intensive industries and hard-to-abate sectors.
The new Platform will focus on energy infrastructure projects in the power, heat and transport sectors, assisting with early-stage development, full asset delivery, and subsequent operation of the assets. This will include acquiring, constructing, and operating solar photovoltaic (PV), battery energy storage systems (BESS), substations, industrial heat pumps and heat recovery systems, industrial EV charging solutions and electric fleets, including Electric HGVs. These technologies will be installed directly on client premises to deliver tailored, on-site renewable energy solutions, or connected directly to national grids. All infrastructure investments will be fully managed by the Partnership to optimise commercial targets.
The platform’s flexibility will enable it to fund energy infrastructure projects, primarily in Ireland, as well as in the UK and continental Europe. It will focus on hard-to-abate sectors such as data centres, food and beverage, cement, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and manufacturing.
By combining the extensive experience in project funding by Aviva Investors and Astatine’s turnkey project implementation across a number of high growth sectors, it is envisaged that projects funded under the platform will help to support industries across the UK and Ireland, and Europe, in meeting their energy transition and emissions targets while delivering material reductions in energy costs.
Under the Partnership, Aviva Investors will become majority shareholder, providing financial backing and driving the platform’s growth, while Astatine will lead on project development, design and delivery, and ongoing operation and maintenance.
The platform launches with a seed portfolio of 128 MW of assets, expected to be operational within the next two years, with a further 500 MW+ of pipeline opportunities.
Angenika Kunne, Head of Infrastructure Equity at Aviva Investors, said:
“This platform is a truly innovative means of providing large energy users in hard-to-abate industries with a dedicated single partner which can provide access to a range of technologies, helping them to decarbonise their production processes. These energy sources are economical, resilient to fluctuating prices suffered by traditional energy sources and can help whole sectors manage their energy transition journey in a cost-effective way. This is a key component for companies looking to cut energy costs and improve economic competitiveness.”
With capabilities to manage the entire engineering, procurement, and delivery processes in-house, the Platform will also have full ownership, control and oversight of all assets, including their ongoing management, to best-ensure performance.
Tom Marren, CEO and co-Founder of Astatine, said:
“We are delighted to partner with Aviva Investors on this ambitious platform. Industrial energy users are under increasing pressure to reduce cost, while delivering climate and energy security targets. With the proven technical and delivery expertise of the Astatine team across the different sectors, it allows customers to have a single company which will deliver solutions across their power, heat and transport requirements. By combining Aviva Investors’ financial strength with our development expertise, we can accelerate the delivery of projects to assist with increasing competitiveness for Europe’s industrial base. And while there is very much a UK and broader European scope to projects that will come under the remit of the platform, we envisage a strong pipeline of eligible projects here, right across the island of Ireland as we are seeing very strong growth in some of the key targeted sectors such as data centres, food and beverage, dairy, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, cement and general manufacturing.”
Angenika Kunne added:
“Our partnership with Astatine is an opportunity to capture attractive returns in Europe’s industrial decarbonisation market and we are pleased to partner with them. Astatine’s strong track record and expertise, alongside its ability to deliver energy infrastructure projects that can reduce energy costs and emissions, make them an ideal partner. We believe this can benefit our investors and companies, by backing proven technologies that can enable decarbonisation at scale, whilst adding resilience through an economical and funded proposition.”
