The IB Deuda Impacto España fund has invested €11m into Fundeen, a crowdfunding platform focused on accelerating the energy transition in the country.
IB Deuda Impacto España, a Spanish social impact debt fund, has committed €11m to Fundeen, a crowdfunding platform focused on accelerating the energy transition in Spain.
The Article 9 fund, which is managed by Madrid-based impact investor Impact Bridge, will provide a €1m upfront loan to help the company develop its portfolio of projects and has also entered into an agreement to commit a further €10m to the company by investing on a cofinancing basis into new projects.
Speaking to Impact Investor, Maria Samoilova, managing partner at Impact Bridge and head of the fund, said: “The way it works is that we’ve invested €1m directly into the company itself but the cooperation consists of the intention from our side to invest into projects identified for the platform. This includes near-term investment into two projects of €10m in total, that will likely enter onto the platform by the end of this year.”
Samoilova said that the intention was to invest into further projects as and when they were identified and launched on the platform, adding their investment could increase in the longer term.
Impact Investor recently reported on a €30m investment received by the fund from Fondo de Impacto Social (FIS), a €400m social impact fund managed by COFIDES.
Ángela Pérez, chair and CEO of COFIDES, said the formalisation of FIS’s investment into the fund marked an important milestone in its strategy to accelerate the development of innovative financial solutions. “Most importantly, these solutions compliment traditional financial markets by effectively responding to the needs of impact-focused companies.”
Democratising investment into renewables
Fundeen, which launched in 2017, aims to disrupt the Spanish energy market, using crowdfunding to raise and invest money into projects supporting the energy transition, such as solar and wind farms and EV charging, all of which are featured on its platform. According to its website, it has made 29 investments to date mainly in Spain but with several also in France.
“They are pretty open in terms of the projects they will support and the funded projects could be across the value chain, including generation, grid and consumption,” explained Samoilova.
Samoilova confirmed the platform had also set a minimum investment threshold of £500.
“Fundeen aims to democratise investment into renewables by enabling any investor profile with a wide range of tickets to invest into the projects they identify and choose to support,” she said.
Another aim of the platform is to help close the financing gap affecting many small-scale projects in the renewable energy sector, albeit its own investments will also allow the platform to support larger scale projects.
Local community investment
Impact Bridge said Fundeen’s business model align with the EU’s aim to promote consumer investment into renewable energy projects.
“Because of the Nimby [Not in my backyard] movement, there is regulation in place in some regions of Spain that requires a certain percentage of any renewable project in an area to be financed by the surrounding community,” said Samoilova, explaining that this is a challenge for large energy companies who don’t have the network of contacts or capacity to do this.
“Big utilities or other companies that are looking to set up a renewables project in a new area, need companies like Fundeen to facilitate that investment and they’re the leading company doing this in Spain.”
Fundeen is expected to invest up to €100m in local renewable energy projects by 2030 and create jobs in and around Ávila, a small city north-west of Madrid, where the company is based. Samoilova said this was important as it would help to counter the long-dated trend of rural exodus to larger cities in Spain.
“That’s a very important angle as it’s creating social impact,” she added.
