Read our interview here with Halvor Nessen, Investment Associate at Luxcara!
Tell us shortly about Luxcara?
Luxcara is an independent asset manager offering equity and debt investment opportunities to international investors in the global renewable energy market. Since 2009, the management-owned company acquires, structures, finances, and operates renewable energy and related infrastructure projects as a long-term buy-and-hold investor.
Luxcara’s longstanding focus on unsubsidized markets has made the company Europe’s most prominent investor in projects with long-term power purchase agreements. The portfolio of the company includes renewable power plants across Europe with a total capacity of more than 3GW and an investment volume exceeding EUR 3bn. The track record makes Luxcara one of the continent’s most experienced asset managers for renewable energy investments.
In Sweden, we are currently working on constructing the largest single-site onshore wind project with over 750 MW of installed capacity.
How come you wanted to be a member of the Swedish Wind Power Association?
Given our presence in Sweden and interest in wind power here, we felt it was natural to become a member of Swedish Wind Power Association and be part of this community. Going forward we also hope to make use of some of the member benefits as well.
What are your expectations of the association going forward?
We are looking forward to receiving the membership magazine and regular newsletter. Hopefully, in the near future, you will also be able to arrange conferences that we can attend in person.
Additionally, we expect that Swedish Wind Power Association continues the work of influencing the stakeholders to further improve and conserve the already very good regulatory conditions for the wind industry in Sweden.
Can you tell us more about your plans for investments in wind energy in Sweden?
As already mentioned, we are currently investing heavily in Swedish wind energy are currently constructing a park with over 750 MW in northern Sweden and we are continuously searching for new investment opportunities.
In our view, Sweden is one of the leading, if not the leading wind market in Europe. In general, we see that several of the projects in Sweden have a very competitive LCOE, among the lowest in Europe, which in our view is driven by a combination of large-scale projects, flexible permitting conditions (which allows for utilizing the latest turbine technology), a stable regulatory regime, a fully market-based system for new projects, and of course a good underlying wind resource.
In Northern Sweden where we have most of our activity, and where we see the largest projects being built, the power prices have historically been rather modest. However, we see that the modest power prices are attracting a low of new green power-intensive industries, like battery factories, Green steel plants, etc. We think this combined with a build-out of the transmission lines to the south will be an attractive combination for wind projects in this area, through a combination of large projects, a large selection of potential offtakers and potentially increasing power prices in the medium to long term.
How do you get in contact with developers? Are you in contact with many developers?
It is a mix. We have established relationships with some developers, which we are in regular contact with. Additionally, if we hear that a developer has attractive projects that have reached a certain maturity level, we also at times reach out to them to introduce ourselves and to get more information about their projects and their plan for their portfolio and see if we can find a way to collaborate. Other times we get introduced to the developer through more structured sales processes facilitated by 3rd parties.
We are in general interested in staying in contact with renewables developers and would encourage developers who are looking for a long-term partner or have opportunities that could be interesting for us to get in touch!
