Infranity is providing a €125m anchor contribution to a facility for the IFM Net Zero Infrastructure Fund, which is managed by IFM Investors.
Infranity, a Paris-based infrastructure asset manager, has led a €350m financing round to support an investment by a fund managed by IFM Investors in renewable energy company ERG.
Infranity, which is part of the Generali group, was the largest investor in the facility, contributing €125m to the IFM Net Zero Infrastructure Fund (NZIF). It did not comment on details of other contributors to the financing.
IFM Investors – which is owned by a group of Australian pension funds –manages IFM NZIF as an open-ended fund that seeks to invest in infrastructure assets accelerating the energy transition.
ERG is an independent power producer for renewable energy, which has expanded from its Italian base to operate across nine European countries and the US. Its assets have installed capacity of around 3.1 gigawatts from wind power and 700 megawatts (MW) from solar power.
Sustainable energy transition
Marie Dowlatyari, vice president at Infranity said ERG’s commitment to a sustainable business model over the past two decades aligned with Infranity’s commitment to sustainable investments.
“This partnership underscores Infranity’s belief that investment in infrastructure that enables a sustainable energy transition offers considerable opportunities to create long-term value and deliver risk adjusted returns,” she said.
ERG is 63%-owned by SQ Renewables, a company in which IFM NZIF has a 49% stake. IFM NZIF first took a stake in SQ Renewables in 2022, at which point it said it was investing over €1bn in the partnership.
Another investor in SQ Renewables is San Quirico, a Genoa-based investment vehicle for the Garrone-Mondini family, which founded ERG as an oil refining company in the 1930s, before transforming it into a green energy firm more recently.
Data centre investments
Infranity’s other activities this year include financing for two data centre companies which aim to develop environmentally-friendly projects. It has provided around €170m of new debt financing for Data4, a pan-European data centre operator owned by Brookfield, followed by the provision of $135m of term-loan financing to Borealis Data Center, a data centre operator with campuses in Iceland and Finland.
Sustainable data centre development is fast becoming a key area for impact-focused investors, given the pressing need to ameliorate emissions and other environmental impacts from an energy-hungry sector expanding to meet demand for artificial intelligence-driven data processing.
Earlier in March, Impact Investor reported on €450m of fresh fundraising by Sweden’s Areim for its fund that owns EcoDataCenter, a builder of data centres using energy efficient and low emissions technology.
ERG itself recently signed a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with Amazon, under which it will supply Amazon with power from its 47.3MW Corlacky Hill wind farm, under construction in Northern Ireland. ERG is expected to supply Amazon with 2.5 terrawatt-hours of power over the PPA’s term.
Amazon has become a major purchaser of renewable energy globally, as it seeks to reduce or offset emissions generated in powering its own AWS data services and other operations.
