Fund manager Foresight Group has launched a bioenergy fund in Australia to invest in projects producing energy from agricultural, council, forestry and mining waste.
The Australia Bioenergy Fund (ABF) will be managed by Foresight and cornerstoned with up to £50 million from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) in Australia. It will target equity investments in projects ranging from £1 million to £50 million, Foresight said.
Foresight currently manages 17 waste projects in the UK with a total capital value of more than £800 million. It also recently established the Bioenergy Infrastructure Group (BIG), an Independent Power Producer focused on bioenergy assets in the UK, owned and funded by the two sponsors, Foresight and Aurium, and the investors, Infracapital and Helios.
"Having seen the success of similar funds mandated to invest in the waste sector in the UK, Foresight is well positioned to implement a similar strategy in Australia where we see an increasing appetite for investment in renewable energy and waste management market," said Nigel Aitchison, Partner at Foresight.
"The Australian Bioenergy Fund will help unlock important opportunities across the economy to harness waste and turn it into energy," said Oliver Yates, CEO of CEFC. "We see this new fund as playing an important role in accelerating and widening the market uptake of bioenergy and energy from waste technologies that have a proven track record overseas but are not yet widely deployed in Australia’s energy mix."
