Siemens Gamesa €1.2 Billion Credit, Masdar Acquires Stake in Endesa, Leeward Renewable Energy Receieves Financing

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Siemens Gamesa has received a €1.2 billion line of ‘green’ guarantees from the Spanish government along with a group of major banks. Masdar is finalizing a deal with Endesa to acquire a 49 percent stake in their 2, 000 megawatt renewable energy portfolio. Leeward Renewable Energy has secured $1.25 billion in financing for its construction warehouse facility. The Welsh government has established Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru, a publicly owned renewable energy developer.

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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of WeatherGuard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of Intel store Phil Totaro and the chief commercial officer of WeatherGuard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. Newsflash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com.

In Spain, Siemens Gamesa has received a crucial financial boost. The Spanish government and major banks have granted the company 1. 2 billion in green guarantees. This support will help Siemens Gamesa, which has been facing financial challenges, To back its wind energy projects, the company is also undergoing leadership changes with Vinod Philip, set to become the new CEO in August.

So Phil, this backing by the Spanish government and banks within Spain is a welcome entrant into the Siemens Gamesa financial situation.

Philip Totaro: It is and it’s something that they’ve been asking for for a while in terms of receiving some level of support. It seems a little lower than what they wanted unfortunately for them.

And keep in mind, this is almost like a, a line of credit type of thing. They don’t have to necessarily tap into this unless they, they actually need it. First of all the second aspect of this is that, the unions are also going to be all over this saying, well, this is ample evidence that you can, keep us on board and keep paying us or it, as it turns out, may have been necessary for them to receive this funding to be able to keep the, the unions happy.

So. We’ll see how much of this they, they end up actually needing. This will presumably be part of their financial reports in the future. How they’re, how they’re putting these funds to use. But hopefully they don’t need to tap into it too much and they can, get back to being a thriving company.

Joel Saxum: My, my main concern with it is if it’s a prop up or is it, is it real, right? So is this something that’s going to really boost them along? Do they really need it? Is it too, is it too little too late or is it just going to sit in an account and not be used? So. I think that what you’ll see from Wall Street and the investors and stock prices is going to be a little bit different than what reality is.

Allen Hall: Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy group, Masdar, is making moves in the Spanish market. After a failed bid for Nanergy, Masdar is now finalizing a deal with Endesa to acquire a 49 percent stake in the 2, 000 megawatt renewable energy portfolio. This could be one of the largest renewable energy deals in spain this year phil

Philip Totaro: yeah this comes on the back of master making moves in europe as we’ve talked about on newsflash and on the uptime podcast previously so the reality of this is this is you know also uh kind of building on what we talked about last week with china.

This is the Middle East deploying their capital and, and putting their money to to work in the renewable space. The, the deal with Endesa, which for those who don’t know, is basically Enel’s Spanish subsidiary. This is actually a pretty important step. Now, this isn’t getting 49 percent of all of Vendessa, just to be clear.

It’s only, as Allen mentioned, the renewables portfolio. But it’s still a pretty big step for them to make. And gives them, ample reason to to want to continue kind of building out their, their footprint throughout

Joel Saxum: Europe. Yeah. Masdar is taking the path of everybody else. It just seems odd to us because Masdar, Middle East money, but it’s the same exact thing that’s happening with a lot of the big money around Europe in the Western countries, right?

Blackrock and Brookfield, these other guys doing the same thing. Like, like Phil said, we’ve talked about on the podcast regularly. But. Just a

Allen Hall: different player in the market. In the U. S., Leeward Renewable Energy has secured 1. 25 billion dollars in financing for its construction warehouse facility.

This three year committed capital will fund the construction of six wind, solar, and battery storage projects, totaling nearly one gigawatts of capacity. Bill. This is quite amazing. Billions of dollars, again, going into renewables. That’s good.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, it is. And what’s, what’s interesting is that you’re seeing some of these companies tapping, these billions of dollars for multiple different projects, cross cutting a lot of different renewables.

It’s not just, we’re going to give you, 400 million to go do one project or 500 million to go build something that might be a hybrid project. This is, as you mentioned, billions that is going into building these kind of cross disciplinary and cross technology.

Renewables projects that are actually going to provide, base load during the day and at night, plus some battery storage capability that will, help back up and stabilize the grid. So this is actually really great to see.

Joel Saxum: Leeward a great great independent power producer, right?

They’ve been buying some assets, moving some stuff around. Nice to see that they’ve got some capital behind them. I’ve worked personally with some of the engineers over there. Great people. Some really smart engineers. So they’ll, they’ll do well. It’s nice to see solar and wind kind of in that, that same development

Allen Hall: build out plan at the same time.

Over in the UK, the Welsh government is taking a direct approach to renewable energy development. They’ve established Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru, a publicly owned renewable energy developer. This new entity aims to develop at least 250 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity by 2030 with an additional 750 megawatts by 2040.

focusing particularly on onshore wind projects. Now, Bill, this is a little unique that Wales is taking this step. Do you think I think this is a start of many such efforts to promote onshore and offshore wind.

Philip Totaro: That’s kind of fascinating question. I mean, you’ve seen other kind of sovereign wealth funds or, national funds or things like that from a financial standpoint, get stood up.

It’s rare that a government in this case, the Welsh government has stood up an actual, project development company that’s supposed to have, a development pipeline and portfolio. They do have plenty of people that know what they’re doing over there. So I don’t think they’re going to be hurting for, for getting experience on board with doing it.

But it is a bit interesting because Wales does have some locations that are kind of constrained from, from build out because of culturally sensitive areas that they’re not necessarily going to be able to, to fully build out in Wales, but there is still plenty of places in that part of the UK where they, they can certainly build out the rest of this portfolio that they, they want to do.

And it should give them an ample. Vehicle to be able to do it with this this government.