Renewable

September 26 (Renewables Now) - Australia’s Macquarie Group (ASX:MQG) intends to develop, through the Green Investment Group (GIG) in the UK, a 20-GW pipeline of renewables projects in the next five years.

CEO Shemara Wikramanayake made the announcement at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, noting that emerging market countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) could be home to roughly 20% of that capacity. Macquarie expects many of these new projects to be realised through corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs). 

Apart from building a multi-gigawatt renewables portfolio, GIG will also be involved in a project to boost the availability of standardised, climate-related data. Through a combination of GIG’s Carbon Score methodology and BloombergNEF’s project data, the two will develop a tool to assess the green impact of over 40,000 wind and solar assets globally.

At the Climate Summit, Macquarie announced a bunch of other clean initiatives and commitments, such as a 100% renewable power target for its premises and data centres by 2025, under the RE100 initiative, and an intention to launch carbon and energy reporting for Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets’ (MIRA) portfolio companies. The investment bank and financial services major is also ready to provide green bank advisory services in new countries, having already partnered with the UN Green Climate Fund to support the launch of the Mongolian Green Finance Corporation.