CEE Group announces equity closing for CEE Renewable Fund 7

The Ham­burg-based asset man­ag­er for renew­able ener­gies, CEE Group, reports a clos­ing for the Renew­able Fund 7 (CEE RF7). The spe­cial AIF (SICAV-RAIF), which was only launched in Lux­em­bourg in Decem­ber 2020, has already received equi­ty com­mit­ments of EUR 350 mil­lion from insti­tu­tion­al investors, which means that 70 per­cent of the tar­get vol­ume of EUR 500 mil­lion has already been reached. The fund man­age­ment invests in wind and solar ener­gy infra­struc­ture plants in Euro­pean core mar­kets for renew­able ener­gies. CEE Group has so far launched sev­en renew­able ener­gy funds in Ger­many and Lux­em­bourg and man­ages over two bil­lion euros in this asset class.

One year after launch­ing its CEE Renew­able Fund 7 (CEE RF7), CEE Group announces an equi­ty clos­ing. With equi­ty com­mit­ments of 350 mil­lion euros, the asset man­ag­er has already raised well over half of the tar­get vol­ume of 500 mil­lion euros.

“The suc­cess­ful place­ment process at CEE RF7 once again con­firms the spe­cial trust of our insti­tu­tion­al investors in CEE Group’s exper­tise and our sus­tain­able invest­ment con­cepts and strate­gies in the renew­able ener­gy asset class. We now aim to reach, if not exceed, the tar­get vol­ume of 500 mil­lion euros by the end of the cur­rent year,” explains Detlef Schreiber, CEO of CEE Group. “The gen­er­al eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy con­di­tions speak in favor of our being able to achieve this goal. For exam­ple, in his open­ing state­ment at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary, Eco­nom­ics and Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion Min­is­ter Robert Habeck reaf­firmed the new fed­er­al government’s course with regard to the expan­sion of renew­able ener­gies in Ger­many. By 2030, their share is to rise to 80 per­cent. Sim­i­lar tar­gets are being pur­sued by gov­ern­ments in our oth­er Euro­pean tar­get mar­kets,” said Schreiber.

Leon­hard Uphues, CSO of CEE Group, adds: “We are see­ing an over­all increase in inter­est from insti­tu­tion­al investors in the renew­able ener­gy asset class. In addi­tion to our exist­ing investors, we have also been able to attract new investors in the course of the place­ment of the CEE RF7. The equi­ty raised ensures the con­tin­ued growth of our renew­able ener­gy port­fo­lio, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in view of the well-filled deal flow pipeline.”

In total, CEE Group has invest­ed around 200 mil­lion euros of equi­ty in the wind pow­er and pho­to­volta­ic sec­tor in 2021, with a trans­ac­tion vol­ume of around 300 mil­lion euros 10 trans­ac­tions. In doing so, the company’s mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team of more than 70 employ­ees cov­ers the entire val­ue chain from project pro­cure­ment and oper­a­tional man­age­ment to fund struc­tur­ing and fund man­age­ment. The port­fo­lio of renew­able ener­gy assets cur­rent­ly com­pris­es a total of 80 renew­able ener­gy plants, 42 onshore wind farms and 38 solar farms in six Euro­pean coun­tries. These plants gen­er­at­ed around 1,400 megawatts of green pow­er per year in 2021, sup­ply­ing elec­tric­i­ty to more than one mil­lion peo­ple in Den­mark, Ger­many, France, the Nether­lands, Swe­den and Spain. In the process, around 828,000 tons of cli­mate-dam­ag­ing CO2 are saved each year.

Focus on wind and solar energy infrastructure assets in core European markets

The CEE RF7 fol­lows the well-estab­lished and suc­cess­ful CEE invest­ment strat­e­gy, which aims at long-term val­ue enhance­ment tak­ing into account the sus­tain­able invest­ment objec­tive of avoid­ing or reduc­ing CO2 emis­sions. To this end, the CEE Group invests exclu­sive­ly in onshore wind and solar ener­gy infra­struc­ture assets in core Euro­pean mar­kets.

The fund, which is designed as a Lux­em­bourg spe­cial AIF (SICAV-RAIF), has a term of 20 years plus an exten­sion option of 2 times 5 years. The fund is aimed at semi-pro­fes­sion­al and pro­fes­sion­al investors as defined by the Ger­man Cap­i­tal Invest­ment Code. A peri­od of one to two years, but no more than three years from the final equi­ty clos­ing, is envis­aged for the invest­ment phase..