Berkeley Wind Energy Mauritius

Equity : June 2011

Berkeley Wind Energy Mauritius is a holding that aims at investing in wind projects or/and wind developers in India and potentially Sri Lanka and the Philippines. The target size is 250 to 450MW.

Amount

€ 3,000,000.00

Type of investment

Equity

Development impacts

Local economic growth
Fight against climate change and preservation of natural resources
Food security & rural development

Beneficiary locations

Asia: India, Philippines, Sri Lanka

Investment field

Infrastructure

Activity

Energy (wind)

Organisation

Berkeley Wind Energy Mauritius

Website

https://www.berkeley-energy.com/

Domicile

Mauritius

Berkeley Wind Energy Mauritius (holding), a private limited company created in 2010 by Berkeley Energy, manager of the Renewable Energy Asia Fund (REAF) in which BIO has committed €6 million in December 2009. The holding aims at investing in several wind projects in India, the Philippines or Sri Lanka, ring-fence them and later aggregate them to sell them as a whole.

The first investment of Berkeley Wind Energy Mauritius is an investment of €34 million equity in a Greenfield renewable energy developer in India, Panama Wind India Private Ltd (Panama Wind) developing a 100MW wind farm 350 km South of Mumbai and willing to develop further wind projects in India (200-300MW pipeline).

Development impacts

Local economic growth
India suffers from an important energy shortage, which is a bottleneck for growth. Large cities and rural areas have to face load shedding and power cuts throughout the day. By adding new capacity to the grid, the project will support the activity of small and medium firms and answer to the people's growing needs.
Fight against climate change and preservation of natural resources
India has very large coal reserve and coal power plants represent 50% of the installed capacity. Developing the renewable energy capacity will help to have a more balanced energy mix and to support the increasing energy access while limiting the corresponding CO2 emissions.
Food security & rural development
23 million rural households in 120.000 villages are currently not connected to the grid due to lack of capacity. This project will increase the global capacity and indirectly help increase rural access to energy.