Register for MEED's 14-day trial access 

Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) is expected to launch its third green bond issue around September next year, according to its chief financial officer, Mazin Khan.

The third issuance will follow the company’s second bond issuance under its Green Finance Framework, which raised $1bn in July this year.

“We expect to be a repeat issuer … we have so far raised $1.7bn through the first two rounds of our Green Finance Framework and we had planned to raise $3bn,” Khan told MEED on the sidelines of the ongoing Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition (Wetex) in Dubai. “There is still a good amount to tap into.”

Masdar is deploying the proceeds from its green bond issuances to fund its equity commitments on new greenfield projects, including several in developing economies, as the company pursues a target portfolio capacity of 100GW by 2030, the company said last year.

Khan expects future issuances to continue to attract regional and international investors based on the nearly fivefold oversubscription of its green bond issue this year.

“There is a lot of demand for our green bonds because we use our green bonds to fund new renewable energy projects. This means every single dollar the debt investors give us goes towards brand new projects, which helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Khan.

Terra-Gen deal

On 1 October, Masdar announced that it had closed its acquisition of a 50% stake in US-based Terra-Gen Power Holdings II from Energy Capital Partners.

Igneo Infrastructure Partners retains its existing 50% stake in Terra-Gen, which has a gross operating portfolio comprising  3.8GW of wind, solar and battery storage projects, including 5.1GWh of energy storage facilities, across 30 renewable power sites throughout the US.

“We continue to see great growth potential in North America, particularly in the US,” Khan said, citing that the deal is an important step towards realising his firm’s target of reaching 100GW of gross capacity by 2030.

He said the company’s current gross capacity is somewhere around 30GW and it is on track to achieve its 2030 target. “You’ve probably seen the number of acquisitions and the expansion plans we have announced, which is facilitating growth to achieve that target.”

Notably, in July, Masdar agreed to partner with Spanish utility company Endesa for 2.5GW of renewable energy assets in Spain.

Masdar said it plans to invest €817m ($887m) to acquire a 49.99% stake, with an enterprise value of €1.7bn. This represents one of Spain’s biggest renewable energy deals.

Growing too fast

In the future, Masdar expects to continue considering opportunities in every market and across all types of renewable technologies, including battery energy storage systems, solar, wind and geothermal.

“Battery storage and other storage technologies are key areas of focus, and we consider these very, very important going forward. We’re seeing more and more solar projects coupled with battery storage to address the intermittency risk,” added Khan. 

Closer to home, Masdar also intends to bid for contracts to develop every renewable energy project in Saudi Arabia, which has indicated plans to procure 20GW of renewable energy capacity every year starting in 2024. 

Last year, it won the contract to develop a 1.1GW solar photovoltaic project in the kingdom in partnership with France’s EDF and the local Nesma Renewables. It also won a contract in the UAE to develop the 1.8GW sixth phase of Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid solar park.

Khan acknowledges the inherent risk of growing too fast, but says: “We ensure that the risk is mitigated as much as possible.”

He adds: “For instance, when we look at new investments and opportunities, we ensure that we are doing our due diligence and our valuation of those opportunities at sufficient levels of detail.”