Australia’s Future Fund and QIC, the Queensland government-owned investment manager, have bought a 19.9% stake in Tilt Renewables from AGL Energy for A$750m (€423m).
Tilt owns and operates a 1.9GW portfolio comprising 12 assets across wind, solar and battery storage, along with a development pipeline over 1.6GW scheduled for final investment decisions in the next 12 months.
AGL will use the proceeds from the divestment to continue to deliver AGL’s strategy, including to fund its investment and to provide additional balance sheet flexibility.
Damien Nicks, AGL managing director, said: “We look forward to continuing to work with Tilt, QIC and the Future Fund as Tilt delivers its development pipeline.
“The transaction demonstrates our commitment to realising value in our portfolio and recycling capital to invest in flexible, dispatchable capacity as we work towards our expanded 6GW target of new firming and renewable projects by 2030.”
Ross Israel, head of global infrastructure at QIC, said: “Structural shifts in Australia’s renewable energy build out continue to present compelling and differentiated opportunities to deploy capital at scale.
“With wind anticipated to account for approximately 70% of new utility-scale generation through to 2030, Tilt is one of the few platforms that can deliver at the pace and scale the market is demanding.”
Patrick Mulholland, QIC global infrastructure partner, said: “From two seed assets and a single customer to Australia’s largest portfolio of operating wind assets, the partnership between QIC, Future Fund and AGL established a market leading platform under a shared commitment to drive large-scale renewable energy projects.”
Anthony Fowler, Tilt Renewables CEO, said: “As Australia accelerates towards a cleaner energy future, Tilt Renewables is leading from the front with two projects expected to reach final investment decision in 2025, potentially the first large-scale wind projects to reach this milestone in Australia this year.”
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