UK's BII and Denmark's CIP Unveil $300 India Renewables Platform | Global Lens

Ajouté : 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]As the West Asian stability keeps energy markets on edge, India is seeing fresh momentum on the clean energy front.

[00:00:07]British International Investment and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners have launched Northstar, a $300 million renewable energy platform aimed at accelerating clean power in India. The two firms will commit up to $150 million each investing in solar, wind, hybrid renewable energy, and battery storage projects. The initiative is expected to generate over 4 million megawatt hours of clean energy and avoid nearly 4 million tons of carbon emissions every year. To discuss this, joining us now is Leslie Maasdorp, the CEO of BII.

[00:00:43]Thank you so much, Leslie, for making time and speaking with CNBC-TV18. My first question to you is, you have unveiled a $300 million platform for renewable power generation in India.

[00:00:54]What is the goal?

[00:00:57]So, BII historically have been investing in the energy transition in India.

[00:01:03]We two weeks ago launched a new five-year strategy for BII. Within that strategy, we have an ambition to deploy up to 15 billion dollars of billion pounds of capital over the next five years. That is globally. And within that, our key objective is half of that number will be mobilized from private institutional investors.

[00:01:27]India, as you [clears throat] know, is one of the largest emerging markets, and from a clean energy transition perspective, we're very excited about this announcement. So, together with the Danish global fund manager, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, we're launching this platform to invest across various technologies in solar, wind, hybrid, in order to accelerate the energy transition process in India. And with this investment, we will be crowding in more institutional investors over time.

[00:02:02]Right. Following up on that, estimates suggest that India needs more than $160 billion annually in climate finance until 2030.

[00:02:11]How much of that gap can institutions like BII realistically help bridge?

[00:02:18]Well, firstly, the reason why India is so attractive to development finance institutions like ourselves is because the country has set such very clear ambition way back 10 11 years of 500 gigawatts by 2030.

[00:02:31]So, we have a very clear sort of policy direction and momentum around our investments.

[00:02:38]So, [snorts] what we hope to do is to create an entire ecosystem through our investment. We will be able to create the kind of conditions that will attract other development finance institutions to do the same. As you might know, 2017-2018 we established a platform called Ayana. And through that 100 million dollars of equity, we were able to generate by the time we sold the business just over 4.1 gigawatts of power when we sold the business for 2.3 billion last year. Naturally, a 160 billion dollars funding gap is a massive number. We contribute alongside other institutions to that target.

[00:03:19]Right.

[00:03:20]You know, at the at a time of global uncertainty, how challenging is it to attract private institutional investors into emerging markets like India?

[00:03:30]I think one has to be country specific in addressing that question. India, I would say, is probably the most attractive, the leading investment destination in the clean energy domain.

[00:03:42]You might know, India has the third largest installed renewable capacity in the world after China and the United States. And the rate of growth, the sheer scale and speed of implementation is at a at a different uh level.

[00:03:56]So, the other key aspect to highlight is that India's got a very sort of strong domestic financial sector. It's got more than a trillion dollars of assets under management in its mutual fund industry. So, there's significant domestic institutional savings that can be crowded in. So, we are very confident that through this investment we will be able to scale and mobilize more debt financing through the investments that we will be making alongside Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

[00:04:28]Uh the Northstar platform focuses on solar, wind, hybrid, and storage projects. Which segment of India's clean energy ecosystem do you believe is currently the most under invested and why?

[00:04:42]Think in in all of these domains, if you if you if you look back at India's sort of transition over the last decade, it's not much has been investment in the sort of solar domain.

[00:04:53]Solar's been the most spectacular, I should say. I mean, India had something like 3 gigawatts of solar installed capacity in 2014 and that increased 50-fold to 150 today.

[00:05:05]So, there's gaps in all of the different domains, but solar I would say is probably the most attractive. But, there's significant investment required now in storage capacity because, as you know, you have a problem with intermittency in renewable energy. The sun doesn't always shine. So, hybrid technologies becomes vital. So, we will be be working across the different technologies both in solar, wind, as well as storage.

[00:05:32]All right, thank you so much, Mr. Leslie, for making time and speaking with CNBC-TV18.

[00:05:37]Uh moving on to the other big