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London, 14 June 2021 – Pension Insurance Corporation plc (“PIC”), a specialist insurer of defined benefit pension schemes, has provided £175 million (€203 million) of senior secured debt funding, as sole investor, for a further 18 solar parks. PIC has invested £777 million in solar energy to date, covering 60 solar plants. PIC made its first renewable energy investment in 2012 and has made a total investment of over £1.5 billion in the sector.
The solar parks, which are owned by Q-Energy, a leading European investor and asset manager in the renewable energy sector, have been in operation for 13 years. They benefit from the Spanish regulatory framework for the full term of the bond. This framework structures payments from the Spanish electricity system and guarantees an agreed level of return and therefore predictable cashflows to back PIC’s pension liabilities.
As part of the Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”) analysis of this investment, PIC reviewed the community impact, potential environmental disruption, staff health and safety, as well as project accountability. This feeds through into PIC’s in-house ESG risk assessment framework, which provides an ESG issuer score. All of these factors are reviewed on an annual basis. The parks will generate enough electrical capacity to power more than 17,300 households each year.
Key points of the transaction:
Daniel Parejo, Q-Energy Partner and CIO, said: “We are pleased to have completed this latest round of debt funding with PIC in Spanish photovoltaic plants, which is evidence of the strong working relationship we have built with PIC’s innovative and flexible team. Q-Energy is the leading renewable energy project bond issuer in Europe and has placed over €2 billion among tier 1 institutional investors, such as PIC, in recent years.”
Florence Carasse, Senior Debt Origination Manager at PIC, said: “PIC is a committed investor in renewable energy with total investments of more than £1.5 billion in the sector, as a socially beneficial outcome of our purpose. Q-Energy has once again shown great knowledge and expertise in structuring deals that allow long-term investors such as PIC to invest in clean energy. By funding infrastructure projects dedicated to tackling climate change, PIC’s investments help to secure pension payments to our 273,000 policyholders and benefit society as a whole.”
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Notes to Editors:
For further information please contact:
Pension Insurance Corporation
Jeremy Apfel
+44 (0)20 7105 2140
apfel@pensioncorporation.com
About Pension Insurance Corporation
The purpose of PIC is to pay the pensions of its current and future policyholders. PIC provides secure and stable retirement incomes through leading customer service, comprehensive risk management and excellence in asset and liability management. At 31 December 2020, PIC had insured 273,500 pension scheme members and had £49.6 billion in financial investments, accumulated through the provision of tailored pension insurance buyouts and buy-ins to the trustees and sponsors of U.K. defined benefit pension schemes. Clients include FTSE 100 companies, multinationals and the public sector. PIC is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority (FRN 454345). For further information please visit www.pensioncorporation.com
About Q-Energy
Q-Energy is proud to have more than 170 employees based in Madrid and Berlin offices, and to have invested over €6bn in global renewable energy assets since its inception, including having raised more than €5bn of debt, either in bank debt or project bonds, and often pioneering the market with new structures. Our in-house Asset Management team currently manage over 1GW of PV assets, 220 MW of CSP assets, and over 190 MW of wind assets in Spain, Germany and Italy.
