The Ham­burg-based asset man­ag­er for renew­able ener­gies, CEE Group, announces the first clos­ing for its Renew­able Fund 7 (CEE RF7). Equi­ty com­mit­ments for the sub-fund have so far been raised from insti­tu­tion­al investors in a vol­ume of 165 mil­lion Euro. The fund, launched as a Spe­cial-AIF (SICAV-RAIF) in Lux­em­bourg, invests pri­mar­i­ly in exist­ing wind and solar ener­gy infra­struc­ture assets in the core Euro­pean mar­kets for renew­able ener­gy. CEE Group cur­rent­ly man­ages around 1.9 bil­lion Euro in renew­able ener­gy assets and plans to grow in the cur­rent year by invest­ing in pho­to­volta­ic projects in Ger­many and Spain, among oth­er projects.

Only a few months after launch, CEE Group announces the first clos­ing for its CEE Renew­able Fund 7 (CEE RF7). The tar­get size of the sub-fund is 500 mil­lion Euro, the hard cap is set at one bil­lion Euro. Fur­ther clos­ings are planned for lat­er this year. “With the first clos­ing for RF7, we seam­less­ly fol­low the suc­cess­ful place­ment of its pre­de­ces­sor CEE RF6, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly exceed­ed our expec­ta­tions with a hard cap at 275 mil­lion Euro,” explains Detlef Schreiber, CEO of CEE Group. “With their cap­i­tal com­mit­ments for the suc­ces­sor fund, our investors are express­ing their con­fi­dence in us and show­ing that the renew­able ener­gy asset class now has a firm place in the port­fo­lio allo­ca­tion of insti­tu­tion­al investors. It makes an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to meet­ing the demand for sus­tain­able invest­ments and to vig­or­ous­ly pur­su­ing the cli­mate tar­gets set inter­na­tion­al­ly,” adds Leon­hard Uphues, CSO of CEE Group.

CEE RF7 fol­lows an invest­ment strat­e­gy that aims to achieve long-term val­ue growth while tak­ing into account the sus­tain­able invest­ment objec­tive of avoid­ing or reduc­ing CO2 emis­sions. To this end, the asset man­age­ment invests pri­mar­i­ly in exist­ing wind and solar ener­gy infra­struc­ture plants – so called brown­field invest­ments. The geo­graph­i­cal focus of the invest­ments is on the core mar­kets for renew­able ener­gies in Europe, includ­ing Ger­many, the Nether­lands, France, Swe­den and Spain.

The fund, designed as a Lux­em­bourg Spe­cial-AIF (SICAV-RAIF), has a dura­tion 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 after final clos­ing, is planned for the invest­ment phase. 75 mil­lion Euro has already been allo­cat­ed to the fund’s port­fo­lio.

Long-term power purchase agreements enable economic operation without government subsidies

The new Spe­cial-AIF is the lat­est of a total of sev­en invest­ment vehi­cles for renew­able ener­gies launched by CEE Group in Ger­many and Lux­em­bourg. It reflects the con­sis­tent expan­sion of activ­i­ties in the core busi­ness of renew­able ener­gies, which began in 2000. “With our clear focus on the wind and pho­to­volta­ic sec­tors, we cov­er the entire val­ue chain from project pur­chas­ing and oper­a­tional man­age­ment to fund struc­tur­ing and fund man­age­ment,” explains Schreiber. “In the ongo­ing year, we will expand our mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary team of busi­ness peo­ple, engi­neers and elec­tri­cal tech­ni­cians from the cur­rent 50 employ­ees to around 60 spe­cial­ists, in par­tic­u­lar to dri­ve for­ward tech­ni­cal opti­miza­tions and the imple­men­ta­tion of ESG cri­te­ria. In doing so, we aim to strength­en our posi­tion as a major impact investor in the green ener­gy sec­tor and part­ner to insti­tu­tion­al investors for sus­tain­able cap­i­tal invest­ments.”

The CEE port­fo­lio, cur­rent­ly includ­ing 40 onshore wind farms and 32 solar parks, gen­er­ates over 1,050 megawatts of green elec­tric­i­ty per year for more than one mil­lion peo­ple in Ger­many, France, the Nether­lands and Swe­den. In 2020 alone, the Group invest­ed 200 mil­lion Euro in equi­ty in wind pow­er and pho­to­voltaics across ten trans­ac­tions with a total trans­ac­tion vol­ume of 435 mil­lion Euro.

In the cur­rent year 2021, CEE Group is expand­ing its coun­try allo­ca­tion with fur­ther projects in Spain, which are about to be imple­ment­ed. “We find excel­lent con­di­tions in Spain for the eco­nom­ic oper­a­tion of renew­able ener­gy projects with­out gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies. The coun­try is one of the growth mar­kets of the past two to three years, char­ac­ter­ized by good loca­tions and large-scale pho­to­volta­ic projects, par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing from the point of view of insti­tu­tion­al investors due to long-term pow­er pur­chase agree­ments, so-called PPAs, with cred­it­wor­thy con­tract part­ners,” explains Uphues. “In Ger­many, we are also observ­ing a trend toward large-scale pho­to­volta­ic parks with more than 100 megawatts of capac­i­ty, in which PPAs play a sig­nif­i­cant role and enable oper­a­tion inde­pen­dent of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies. Over­all, we expect the renew­able ener­gy mar­ket in Europe to con­tin­ue to grow strong­ly, with an esti­mat­ed invest­ment vol­ume of 21 to 24 bil­lion Euro annu­al­ly.”