Iberdrola puts UK second in its green investment plans with £12bn tranche
Spanish energy giant Iberdrola is set to send more green energy investment to the UK than Spain, Germany, France and Australia combined.
The group today revealed that it will be sending £12bn over the next three years to the market, the second largest allocation in a £35bn tranche that will also see the creation of 10,000 jobs.
Spain and Portugal will between them receive 15 per cent, while Germany, France, Australia and others will take 11 between them.
Speaking to the Financial Times today, the group said that the UK’s allocation marks the second largest tranche behind the US, which is set to benefit from 34 per cent of Iberdrola’s package.
Iberdrola’s chief executive Ignacio Galan seemed to be unfazed by the prospect of Donald Trump re-claiming the US presidency in November from incumbent Joe Biden, whose green investment-boosting Inflation Reduction Act Trump wants to repeal.
“We are not depending in our plan on the IRA being maintained,” he said. “We would be very pleased if it was maintained of course, but for the present it’s not in our plan at all.”
The report states that 87 per cent of Iberdrola’s investments will come from the company directly, with the remaining 13 per cent being made up by investors that include Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and the renewable energy arm of the UAE government, Masdar.
In terms of sector focus, Iberdrola has said it will build up offshore wind projects, of the which the UK and US are in desperate need, as well as portioning around 60 per cent of its overall investment package to electricity grids.
Both sectors have been front of mind for the UK energy sector recently.
After a bruising last showing that attracted no bidders, the government is set to host the first stages of its next auction round for offshore wind developers at the end of this month.
In preparation, chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled an upped budget of £800m for the projects in his Spring Budget statement earlier in the month.
The National Grid also revealed plans to overhaul the way the UK generates and distributes it electricity via a new framework to be rolled out beyond 2030.
In the report, published earlier this week, the FTSE-listed utility proposed around 5,000 miles of undersea cabling to more efficiently utilise offshore wind’s power.