Macquarie Group and Spring Infrastructure Capital have agreed to sell their stake in a UK windfarm to Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. NBIM will buy the 37.5% stake in Race Bank Offshore Wind Farm for approximately £330 million (US$418 million), Macquarie said in a statement. The wind farm, which is 27 kilometres off the Norfolk coast, has been operational since 2018. It has a capacity of 573 megawatts (MW), and powers the equivalent of more than 510,000 UK homes annually. Following Macquarie and Spring’s divestment, the wind farm will be co-owned by NBIM, Arjun Infrastructure Partners (12.5% stake), and Danish multinational energy company Ørsted (50% stake). Jonathan Duffy, Managing Director at Macquarie Asset Management Green Investments, said: “Supporting Race Bank from construction into its successful operations has been a great journey. Now producing electricity for more than half a million UK homes, it has become a significant contributor to the ongoing decarbonisation of the UK’s electricity system.” Macquarie Asset Management, the fund management arm of the Australian diversified financial services giant, remains a major owner of wind farms in the UK, with stakes in seven offshore projects. Its investment bank arm also continues to help develop greenfield projects, including the 2-gigawatt (GW) West-of-Orkney farm, the 1.5-GW Outer Dowsing, the 1.2-GW Rampion 2, and the 353-megawatt Five Estuaries offshore wind farms. NBIM manages around US$1.66 trillion on behalf of Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, nicknamed the ‘oil fund’.
