Page 11 - AsiaElec Week 29

AsiaElec RENEWABLES AsiaElec
Greenko raises $950mn in bond offer
INDIA
INDIA’S Greenko Energy Holdings, which is backed by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Holdings and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), raised $950mn through a bond o er with global investors on July 22. is is reported to be one of the largest overseas green bonds ever raised by an Indian clean energy producer.
e bond raising came a er the two sover- eign wealth funds agreed to invest an additional $329mn into Greenko. ADIA owns 15% of the company, while GIC holds 61%. Greenko’s founders, Mahesh Kolli and Anil Kumar Cha- lamalasetty, own the remaining 24%.
In June, ADIA and GIC also invested $945mn into Greenko for the construction of power storage projects. The two sovereign wealth funds have so far spent a total of $2.2bn on the company.
“We successfully raised the bond for $950mn with over three times [oversubscription] by global investors,” Kolli, who is also Greenko’s president and joint managing director, was reported by India’s Mint news outlet as saying. “ is is the largest high-yield bond from India this year and largest green bond from Asia,” he added.
Kolli said the bonds were rated Ba1 by Moody’s.
Greenko owns operating assets with a com- bined capacity of 4.2 GW and has a further 7 GW under construction. e company raised $1bn through dollar-denominated bonds in 2017.
Indian companies have been turning to overseas markets for raising debt in an attempt to take advantage of lower interest rates. is comes as obtaining nancing at the lowest cost
has become all the more important after the country’s solar and wind industries transitioned from a feed-in tari (FiT) regime to tari -based competitive auctions. e government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping that using auctions as its preferred methods will help the country meet its ambitious renewable targets.
India is ranked fourth and h globally in installed capacity for wind and solar power respectively, Mint noted. And the country has also become one of the top renewable producers globally, with further plans to expand its capac- ity. India has an installed renewable energy capacity of about 80 GW and is aiming to achieve 175 GW by 2022 and 500 GW by 2030.
Within this, the Indian government is tar- geting 100 GW of solar capacity and 60 GW of wind capacity by 2022. e country had installed over 27 GW of ground-mounted solar projects and over 36 GW of wind capacity as of the end of May.
It is estimated that India’s emerging green economy will require additional investments of around $80bn between now and 2022, with this gure then projected to grow more than three- fold to $250bn over 2023-30. In 2018, Indian companies raised $6.3bn through dollar-de- nominated bonds, though this marked a decline of 51.7% from the previous year according to omson Reuters data.
However, a recent study has found that investments in India’s renewable sector doubled over the last ve years to around $20bn in 2018, surpassing capital expenditure in the thermal power industry.™
India is ranked fourth and fth globally in installed capacity for wind and solar power respectively.
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