Blackstone Invests $3 Billion into Invenergy Renewables

Blackstone Invests $3 Billion into Invenergy Renewables

On Friday Invenergy announced a $3 billion minority, growth equity investment from Blackstone. Existing capital provider, CDPQ, and Invenergy management retain majority control, and Invenergy’s management remain in control of all operational decision making. The press release can be found here. Invenergy was a founding partner to the Energize Ventures story. The Invenergy cofounders, Michael Polsky and Jim Murphy, have seats on the Energize investment committee and provide me with invaluable firm-scaling insights.

Blackstone is at the pinnacle of private markets investing. Blackstone has traditionally focused their infrastructure investments on the traditional hydrocarbon markets, but that focus is changing. The firm has actively discussed (as recently as their Q3 earnings announcement) their intent to deliver more capital to the energy transition.

On ESG. So, what I’d say on that is I think the most relevant areas for us are three areas. We actually talked about this at our Board meeting this week. In the energy credit and energy debt areas, if you went back in time, there was much more orientation toward hydrocarbons and E&P. That — a lot of those activities we’ve deemphasized in a significant way over the last 3 years or 4 years. And we’ve been doing much more around the energy transition and have great success. We announced a big transmission line of hydro-power from Quebec to Queens a few weeks ago. We put an investment into a public company called the Array Technologies, which moves solar panels. We did a preferred with warrants. So, we’ve had a lot of success in that state.

And I would expect the next vintages of our energy equity and energy debt funds will be heavily oriented toward the transition, toward sustainability. I think investors will react well. And I think similarly, we’ll do more in infrastructure, another way investors can play it with us at Blackstone. So, there is a lot of investment demand. And then I would say in some of our more liquid structures and areas, some of the things we do in insurance on asset backs, I think you’ll see more there. So, I think overall as an asset class, the demands for capital are enormous and I think a lot of it will come from private capital. So, I think that bodes well, but it’ll be expressed at our firm in multiple areas.

Jonathan Gray, President & Chief Operating Officer @ Blackstone

Invenergy Renewables is now one of the largest (if not the largest) privately held renewable energy developer in the world. To-date, Invenergy has built 175 projects totaling 25,000 MW and Invenergy is currently developing the largest wind and solar sites in North America.

With more of Invenergy’s customers: utilities, corporations, banks… all looking to own more renewable assets to meet their decarbonization goals, Invenergy is in a fortuitous position where demand for energy assets exceeds the current development cycles. This investment pairs Blackstone with CDPQ as the two premier capital partners enabling Invenergy’s growth.

The Invenergy team is pleased to welcome Blackstone, a leader in the renewable investment space, as our partner. We greatly value our long-term relationship with CDPQ and are thrilled to continue to accelerate the clean energy transition with Blackstone’s additional investment and capabilities.

Jim Murphy, President & Corporate Business Leader at Invenergy

For Energize, we are quite fortunate. We have had a tremendous learning relationship with Invenergy. We get to learn what technology their engineers need to meet the scale of the renewable energy revolution. CDPQ, a premier pension fund, has also already been a foundational partner for Energize and we continue to learn and provide value to their global footprint. With Blackstone now as a new “cousin” I am looking forward to how Energize can begin to become a thought partner to Blackstone and their infrastructure portfolio. The energy transition is still in the early innings.

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