The European Commission has cleared an investment by Canadian pension fund BCI into Eku Energy, a new utility-scale BESS platform launched by Macquarie last year.
The deal was approved last week (10 March) by the Director-General for Competition at the EC, the EU’s executive arm. Global investor Macquarie only launched Eku Energy in November last year through its Green Investment Group (GIG) arm, reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time.
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That was quickly followed by Canada-based pension fund manager British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) announced it was acquiring an interest in Eku Energy in January 2023. The EC’s approval described the deal as the two firms acquiring “…joint control over the whole of the undertaking…” of Eku Energy.
The new platform has 190MWh of projects in late-stage development with a total pipeline of 3GWh in the UK, Australia, Japan, and Europe.
The 190MWh refers to projects which were already in development by GIG prior to forming Eku which were wrapped into the new entity alongside the 3GWh pipeline. Those are a 40MW/40MWh BESS project in England it acquired in June 2021 and a 150MW/150MWh BESS at a former fossil fuel site in Australia.
Financial terms of the deal or Eku Energy were not disclosed in the companies’ announcements. However, the EC’s minimum size threshold for looking at deals in this way is spelt out in this document.
Speaking in January, interim CEO of Eku Chris Morisson said: “We are delighted to receive the backing of BCI. BCI’s investment recognises the quality of our team and platform, as well as the size of the opportunity for battery storage technology as the shift to clean energy accelerates.”
“We look forward to working with teams from Macquarie Asset Management’s Green Investment Group and BCI as we develop our global pipeline of opportunities in battery storage and establish Eku Energy as a leading contributor to the energy transition.”
The company’s Head of Technologies EMEA Andy Hadland was amongst the speakers at last month’s Energy Storage Summit in London, where he discussed the question of revenues for grid-scale BESS projects.
Read more of our coverage from the Energy Storage Summit 2023.
For more information and to register for next year’s 9th edition of the Summit, taking place 21, 22 February 2024 in London, visit the official website.
