companies are turning to the financing of renewable energy
equipment.
Research by Leasing Life has revealed that the
financing of wind farms and machinery that can turn food and wood
waste into clean energy is now at the heart of many lessors’
agendas.
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A business confidence survey published in this issue revealed
that this type of equipment, along with assets used in the
agricultural sector, are thriving during the current downturn.
In the UK, while the leasing arm of the UK’s Co-operative Bank
has been scaling-up its green financing business for some time, new
players have entered the marketplace.
Close Leasing has begun financing clean energy assets. Paul
Bartley, a director of Close Leasing, said that while the financing
of the renewable energy and recycling equipment sector poses
challenges for lessors, it is booming at present largely because it
is “anti-recessionary”.
It was learned last month that New Century Finance (NCF), a UK
lessor which also specialises in the financing of professional
footballer transfers using Islamic finance products, is behind the
financing involved in transferring waste to energy plants.
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By GlobalDataUsing equity funding from high net worth individuals and senior
debt from international banks, it finances material handling
technology which mechanically sorts waste such as glass and
aluminium for recycling.
It also finances an energy-recoverable technology which takes
organic and paper fractions from material separation units and
converts it into renewable thermal energy.
NCF is also involved in financing a $200 million (€139 million)
municipal waste energy project in Mexico, and three projects in
Poland. Two of the latter are for medical waste at a cost of €10
million each, and the other is an industrial waste project costing
€60 million.
It was also learned last month that De Lage Landen is offering a
fiscal-driven operating lease product for windmills that generate
‘clean’ electricity.
DLL, which insures and maintains, as well as finances, the
windmill, also sells the electricity generated to a Dutch energy
company.
In Italy, Leasint, the recently created leasing company formed
from the merger of Banca Intesa and San Paolo IMI, announced in
recent weeks that it is focusing on the leasing of plants for
renewable energy.
It also emerged last month that SEB Lizingas, the leasing arm of
Lithuania’s subsidiary of Swedish financial group SEB, has recently
financed €64 million of wind power generation equipment for a site
in Kretinga, Western Lithuania.
Also, Raiffeisen’s Bulgarian arm has developed a €50 million
wind park on the nation’s Black Sea coast, for which Raiffeisen
Leasing Bulgaria provided full finance, Leasing Life was
told last month.
The Grünwald-based operation of KG Allgemeine Leasing last month
completed the latest in a string of equity raisings for the clean
energy sector.
The project in this case was the creation of photovoltaic
facilities – solar cell panels – for the municipalities of
Villanueva de la Jara and San Clemente, both in the region of
Castile-La Mancha in central Spain.
Brendan Malkin and
Fred Crawley
