Ignitis enters Latvian renewables market with 160MW wind deal

Lithuanian developer Ignitis Group is due to enter the Latvian renewable energy market, having conditionally agreed to acquire three under-development wind farms, once they are awarded construction permits.

Located in western Latvia, they will have a combined capacity of around 160MW. 

Ignitis will pay less than €20 million to acquire the projects and expects to invest up to €200 million to build them, including the initial €20 million outlay.

The unspecified sellers will continue to develop the wind farms and sell shares to Ignitis once they receive construction permits. However, Ignitis will be actively involved in their development.

Ignitis will also look for contractors to build the wind farms and supply the turbines. It aims to start construction in 2024 or 2025 and commission the wind farms between 2025 and 2027.

“We have a target to expand the green generation portfolio to 4 GW by 2030, thus we will keep actively looking for the development opportunities across all Baltic states as well as Poland”, said Darius Maikštėnas, Ignitis Group CEO.

Across the border

Meanwhile, European Energy has secured €130 million in financing from institutional investor EIG Global Energy Partners for the construction of renewable energy projects.

This investment will initially be used to start financing wind farms in Lithuania, where the Danish developer has begun construction of nearly 100MW this year.

European Energy has a development pipeline of more than 1GW of wind capacity in the country. It also has about 300MW of operational wind capacity worldwide, and a renewables pipeline of around 13GW, of which about 25% is wind. 

The €130 million facility can later be used to finance projects in other countries and markets, the developer stated.