Gold Coast-based global investment manager Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has achieved a £650 million ($1.2 billion) final close for its UK-focused Quinbrook Renewables Impact Fund (QRIF).
The raising substantially exceeded the initial target of £500 million with a hard cap of £1 billion.
QRIF will have a 12-year lifespan with provision for three additional one-year extensions.
The fund, which targets 9.9% annual returns, was marketed exclusively to UK institutional investors.
Glasgow City Council approved a £50 million allocation. Other limited partners (LPs) included: the City of Westminster Pension Fund, £18.18 million; and the Strathclyde Pension Fund, £50 million.
Quinbrook managing partner and co-founder Rory Quinlan said: “Select UK power infrastructure assets can have valuable diversifier benefits to portfolio investments which are strongly correlated to GDP.”
Diversifier benefits, QRIF’s “whole of system” investment philosophy, and the sheer scale of the fund in the UK market, proved highly attractive to the targeted investors, Quinlan added. He said the investors saw value in investing in assets which would provide inflation-linked returns while directly addressing critical infrastructure needs that would assist a stable transition to a decarbonised power system.
QRIF is closely aligned with the UK government’s stated goal of achieving a decarbonised power system by 2035. The net zero plan is estimated to require a total of £375 billion in new investment but will create energy resilience and green jobs.
The QRIF portfolio already includes a range of long-term inflation-linked contracts with counterparties such as the UK government and the UK National Grid.
The portfolio’s anchor investment is one of the UK’s largest solar power generation and battery storage projects at Cleve Hill, Kent. Construction work began in April and completion is expected by the end of 2024.
The Cleve Hill project is expected to generate enough power for 100,000 homes while reducing carbon emissions by 164,450 tonnes a year.
Quinbrook, which previously raised other funds including its Net Zero Power Infrastructure vehicle, also has investments in the US and Australia. The firm is an investor with Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures in Sun Cable, the project planned to harvest solar energy in the Northern Territory and transmit it to Darwin and then on, via a submarine cable, to Singapore.
In 2022, Quinbrook announced the launch of a large data storage campus and battery bank project near Brisbane. The Brendale Supernode development is planned to eventually grow to a $2.5 billion asset. The site was selected as being adjacent to the central node of the Queensland electricity network and a new optical fire communications cable linking Brisbane with Guam. The location ensures grid power will be available from three separate high voltage lines to maintain mission critical data centre operations. The battery bank will be developed to store renewable power and eventually make the data storage operations carbon neutral.
Image: Quinbrook’s Cleve Hill solar farm.