BTS Investment Advisors, a private equity fund based in Zurich and Mumbai, plans to start a $150 million fund to invest in Indian clean energy companies amid rising interest in green power to fuel Asia’s top economies.
BTS expects to start the fund by April with an initial $60 million and increase that to $150 million over the next year, Managing Partner K. Srinivas told Bloomberg News by phone.
Clean-energy investment in Asia surpassed the Americas for the first time in 2009 as economic growth and reduced losses from the subprime crisis allowed greater spending, data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance showed. The region is home to the world’s two fastest-growing major economies, China and India, which are also among the four biggest polluters.
“There has been a perception that the clean energy industry is thriving on subsidies, but we have a different opinion,” Srinivas said on Jan. 26. “The industry is maturing and it is now being commercially driven,” because of better government policy, including a more liberalized power trading market and clearer tax structures, “Like the technology sector in the 1990s, clean energy from 2010 onwards will be the main theme for private equity.”
BTS plans to initially invest in companies producing power from wind, biomass and water, as well as those manufacturing renewable energy equipment, he said.
BTS currently manages two other funds – a $22 million Swiss technology fund and a $75 million India private equity fund – whose investors include the Swiss and Taiwanese governments, the Asian Development Bank, the U.K. government-owned investor in developing countries CDC Group Plc, and the Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries. The new fund aims to attract commercial and development-oriented investors, Srinivas said.
Investment in renewable energy projects in the Asia-Pacific region grew 25 percent to $37.3 billion last year. Spending fell by the same rate in North and South America to $32 billion.
Source: Bloomberg