SUSI Partners, acting on behalf of its SETF fund, has secured debt financing for a 107MW portfolio of solar projects in Chile.
The debt financing deal is with the Miami branch of Chilean bank Banco de Crédito e Inversiones (BCI), which is acting as lender and administrative agent, and Norwegian financial services group DNB.
The greenfield distributed generation projects, which benefit from stabilised offtake prices under Chile’s PMGD regime, are under construction with the entire portfolio expected to be fully operational by the end of 2024.
The portfolio was acquired by SUSI as part of a framework agreement with BIWO Renovables, a Chilean renewables developer with longstanding experience in delivering distributed renewable energy projects.
The Chilean portfolio is held through SETF, SUSI’s flagship evergreen energy transition fund, which holds a well-diversified portfolio across OECD jurisdictions, including clean energy generation, energy efficiency, battery energy storage, customer energy solutions and electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Through this partnership, SUSI is looking to further expand its footprint in the rapidly growing Chilean clean power market in the coming years.
The projects exemplify SUSI’s commitment to best-practice ESG standards, which is increasingly an important factor in securing debt financing from top-tier financial institutions.
In addition to dedicated responsible procurement initiatives, SUSI and BIWO are “engaging proactively with local communities, prioritising local suppliers, compensating for temporary loss of agricultural land, and fostering the recycling and reuse of construction materials”.