The investment will help support Vietnamese companies to move to clean energy sources as the country seeks to reduce its reliance on fossil fuel power.
Sustainable investor Mirova is providing $10m (€9.75m) of senior debt financing via its Mirova Gigaton Fund to Berlin-based solar energy developer Ecoligo to expand its portfolio of commercial and industrial (C&I) solar rooftop projects in Vietnam.
The company provides solar photovoltaic (PV) systems through power purchase agreements and lease-to-own models for C&I clients with grid connections and has a focus on emerging markets in southeast Asia and Latin America, such as Chile, Kenya and Vietnam. Besides serving industrial and manufacturing businesses, ecoligo provides PV systems for hotels and resorts, agricultural concerns, private hospitals and universities among other customers.
The company works with local firms to plan, finance and commission solar systems and then maintain them throughout their entire life cycle. The solar energy provider owns a global portfolio of 200 projects with total capacity of 100 megawatts, having raised €74m in finance so far.
Energy transition
The financing, the first in Vietnam by the Mirova Gigaton Fund, will support the drive to help businesses deploy rooftop solar PV to diversify away from the country’s fossil-fuel reliant grid supply. Vietnam is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050, largely through a shift to solar and wind energy.
Mirova, an affiliate of French-based investment manager Natixis, said Vietnam’s C&I solar energy sector was expanding fast. Propelled by domestic energy incentives, solar capacity has risen from near zero in 2018 to around a fifth of total electricity generating capacity in 2022, according to a 2024 report from Vietnam’s renewables energy agency with support from the Danish Energy Agency.
Priyanka Mehrotra, investment director at Mirova in Singapore said Ecoligo’s innovative business model made it stand out as a candidate for impact investment
“This seventh investment from the Mirova Gigaton Fund perfectly aligns with our core strategy, which focuses on providing debt financing to clean energy companies that facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy and enhance energy access in rapidly growing emerging markets,” she said.
The Mirova Gigaton Fund was launched in 2022 to invest in the energy transition in emerging markets with a target size of $500m. Backers include the European investment Bank, whose $75m investment was announced last March.
Investments announced by the fund in 2024 include $20m of long term debt financing to ManoCap Energy, a Ghana-based renewable energy firm, as well as a €15m investment in SolarAfrica, which provides C&I renewable energy solutions across Africa.
Mirova itself, which has some £36bn of assets under management, operates a number of other large funds with sustainable investment themes. It was part of an investor group that recently announced it was investing €120m in Elyse Energy, a sustainable aviation fuel producer.
Last October, Mirova was selected by a consortium of French institutional investors to manage a €100m biodiversity fund, Fonds Objectif Biodiversité.
