“In terms of size and scale, we are close to $3 billion AUM (assets under management),” Nawal Saini, managing director of Brookfield’s renewable power and transition group, said in an interview.
“We think this will be well over $10 billion in the next three-four years as we deploy more capital in just these existing platforms.”
“I am not even accounting for incremental growth that will come in through incremental M&A or what we do outside of these platforms,” said Saini.
The Canadian investor has been rapidly expanding in the space in the past few years.
“We have built a business of scale in India in a relatively short time frame, with our platforms collectively having a portfolio of over 25 GW and growing,” Saini said. “That makes us the second largest renewable business in the country in the private sector.” The 25 GW portfolio is spread across operational, under-construction and late-stage assets. Operational assets are at 8 GW, up from 300 MW at the end of 2017. Adani Green currently has the largest renewable portfolio of 11 GW operational assets and aims to hit 50 GW by 2030.
Brookfield invests in Indian renewable space through the Brookfield Global Transition Fund (BGTF I), a $15 billion fund raised in 2022 and deployed fully. Currently, it’s raising a second fund, BGTF II, which is likely to be as much as $17 billion, as per media reports. In February 2024, it announced a first close of $10 billion in the fund. About 10% of BGTF I has been deployed in India. It’s expected to deploy more from BGTF II in the country.
Brookfield has also been active on the deal front. It acquired wind farms from Hyderabad-based Axis Energy Ventures for Rs 500 crore in 2019. It also picked up 51% in CleanMax Enviro in 2023, with an equity investment of Rs 3,000 crore. Brookfield is set to acquire a controlling stake in commercial and industrial (C&I) platform Leap Green Energy for $500 million, said people with knowledge of the matter.
“We are always keen to acquire high-quality development engines of scale and grow them further, leveraging our strength of access to capital, operating expertise and global procurement efficiencies,” Saini said.
EYES ON EV CHARGING SPACE
Brookfield is closely monitoring the EV charging space. The new transition fund will invest in business transformation and sustainable solutions other than clean energy sources. The sustainable solutions will include EV charging, carbon capture, EV vehicles and other technologies.
“I think India is just a question of scale in the EV sector,” Saini said.
“Is there an opportunity which is large enough to warrant our capital and our bandwidth and our sort of expertise? We would say EV charging is still emerging. It is still not there at the scale that you would want it to be.”
According to Saini, Brookfield is also open to exploring partnerships in the EV space in India. “The kind of transaction that will be tough for us is to take pure consumer risk on electric vehicles, volume and price risk,” he said.
