A new global renewable investment platform has been launched with an initial $100m in capital.
Declan Flanagan, former CEO of Orsted’s onshore business, has founded Bluestar Energy Capital, which is focused on greenfield renewable energy development.
Bluestar will develop regional platforms in the United States, Australia and Europe that will be either wholly owned or controlled subsidiaries and will “engage in opportunistic acquisition activity” to drive growth.
Following the closing of this funding round, the Company has established its first two regional development platforms, Nova Clean Energy and Bluestar Energy Australia.
Nova Clean Energy is Bluestar’s North America-focused development platform and is “pursuing a greenfield project development plan, as well as opportunistic M&A across wind, solar and storage”.
Bluestar Energy Australia is Bluestar’s Australia-focused development platform.
Since entering the Australian market, it has already built a “meaningful pipeline that is focused primarily on wind power, with plans for further additions of solar and storage”.
“A huge amount of capital is seeking a role in the energy transition, but a scarcity remains of the right kind of capital for new development platforms and new projects.
“Our vision is to be one of the largest global investors of early-stage development capital,” said Flanagan (pictured), CEO of Bluestar.
“We have structured Bluestar as a portfolio of distinct regional platforms based on the conviction that successful project development is a very local business.
“Success is about empowering regional leadership while bringing global scale and an owner’s attention to detail in managing project and market risk,” added Flanagan.
Flanagan, who will remain the controlling shareholder of Bluestar, is joined by new investors S2G Ventures and Great Bay Renewables.
As part of the transaction Aaron Rudberg, COO of S2G, and Frank Getman, CEO of Great Bay, have joined Bluestar’s board of directors.
Senan Murphy, former CFO of wind power company Airtricity (sold to SSE and Eon) has also joined Bluestar’s board as a non-executive.