The private markets fund has deployed more than £1bn to date, including investments in the biggest operational solar portfolio to ever be traded in the UK.
The UK’s Environment Agency Pension Fund (EAPF) has committed £170m (€198m) to Greencoat Renewable Income LP (GRI), the UK flagship private markets fund owned by Schroders Greencoat, the specialist renewables and energy transition infrastructure manager of Schroders Capital.
To date, GRI has deployed more than £1bn, including investments in the biggest operational solar portfolio to ever be traded in the UK. It has also invested in the country’s largest district heating platform, the largest portfolio of hydrogen infrastructure in development supported by the British government, and in an offshore wind farm.
The latest investment from GRI takes its total commitments to £1.35bn, as it prepares to close to investors in December.
“Renewable infrastructure assets are the backbone of the energy transition and, as the largest asset manager of operational wind and solar assets in the UK, Schroders Greencoat is able to offer its clients direct access to these opportunities with long-term reliable, inflation-linked cashflows via a diversified strategy,” said Tatiana Zervos, portfolio manager at Schroders Greencoat.
Brunel
The EAPF is the pension fund of the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Shared Services Connected. It looks after the pensions of close to 40,000 public sector workers and had £3.6bn in assets in 2019. It is also part of the UK local government pensions pool Brunel Pensions Partnership, along with several other local government schemes with a combined pool of assets of more than £30bn.
Richard Fanshawe, head of private markets at Brunel Pension Partnership said the commitment “achieves multiple impact, levelling up, energy transition, and return ambitions in one fell swoop for the Environment Agency, whose remit is country-wide, not county-specific.”
Schroders Greencoat said the latest investment was “another example” of local government pension schemes such as the EAPF and the Brunel Partnership “taking steps to deliver impact-focused investments targeted at UK renewable infrastructure”.
