Igneo Infrastructure Partners has launched Vertis Energy, a behind-the-meter platform, and has bolted on a just-acquired business, Green Squares Energy, a commercial-focused rooftop solar operator.
Vertis Energy will build, own and operate onsite solar and battery systems for businesses, and help customers extract greater value from energy assets sitting on their own rooftops and behind the meter. Commercial and industrial solar capacity in Australia are forecast to grow to as much as 31GW by 2050.
Green Squares Energy delivers 46MW from 240 sites around Australia, including two immediate follow-on acquisitions of businesses generating 34MW of behind-the-meter solar and 12MW of small utility-scale front-of-meter solar farms with co-located battery developments to the new platform.
James Willoughby, who runs Vertis, said the Green Squares acquisition gave the platform a strong operating base from day one.
He said: “Vertis is entering the market with real assets, real customers and a clear role helping businesses capture more value from energy at their own sites.”
He said the platform had been created for businesses ready to treat energy as a strategic lever for cost control, resilience and competitiveness.
“Energy is no longer just a line item for facilities teams or procurement departments. For many businesses, it is becoming a much more material driver of cost certainty, resilience and competitiveness.
“Australian businesses have a major opportunity sitting at their own sites. The question is whether they continue to simply buy energy from the market or use the assets they can control to create more certainty and value over the long term.”
Willoughby said there was significant value sitting closer to the customer – on business rooftops, behind the meter and in the energy assets companies could control directly. “Vertis is built to help businesses capture that value,” he said.
Igneo’s head of Australia and New Zealand and a partner of Igneo Infrastructure Partners, Danny Latham, told IPE Real Assets: “Vertis is part of a broader strategy in terms of how we see the energy transition/energy security play out. We’ve got Atmos Renewables – our utility scale business – and Vertis is a continuation of what we’ve been doing on behind the meter.” He said Vertis had a “near-term” acquisition pipeline of 200MW.
Atmos and Vertis platform are part of Igneo’s Australia New Zealand Diversified Infrastructure Fund (ADIF) which currently has about A$1bn (€613m) of assets.
Latham said: “We are looking to build that out over to A$2bn to A$3BN over the next few years” Together the two platforms would contribute to Australia’s demand for electricity which was increasing demonstrably, particularly to support data centres, he added.
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