Ayala debuts into Australia’s renewable energy space

Ayala Corp. chair and CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala

Conglomerate Ayala Corp. is debuting into Australia’s renewable energy space through a joint venture with international renewable energy developer UPC Renewables that involves a 4,600-megawatt (MW) energy portfolio in the continent.

Through wholly-owned unit AC Energy, the group is investing US$30 million for a 50-percent ownership in UPC’s Australian business and has committed a US $200-million facility to fund project equity.

UPC Renewables Australia is developing the 1,000-MW Robbins Island and Jims Plain projects in North West Tasmania and the 600-MW New England Solar Farm located near Uralla in New South Wales. It also has a further development portfolio of another 3,000 MWs located in NSW, Tasmania and Victoria.

“AC Energy is very excited to invest into UPC Renewables Australia as it complements AC Energy’s goal to exceed 5,000 MW by 2025. The UPC Renewables Australia platform is focused on large scale projects and is managed by a high-quality management team, AC Energy president and chief executive officer (CEO) Eric Francia said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

“The Robbins Island project itself is a very large site and together with Jim’s Plains have some of the best proven wind resources in the world, and the New England Solar project has excellent solar resource within close proximity to Transmission,” he added.

Anton Rohner, CEO of UPC Renewables Australia, said AC Energy’s investment into UPC Renewables Australia would enable the group to accelerate projects in Australia.

“We are making progress on the Robbins Island and Jims Plain project in North West Tasmania and we endorse the Prime Minister’s recent comment about how wind and hydro are highly complementary. We expect our projects in North West Tasmania to have capacity factors in the order of 50 percent with the turbines producing power nearly 95 percent of the time,” he said.

“The Robbins Island and Jims Plain projects, together with Tasmania’s hydro assets and other new renewable energy projects, will assist in making the interconnectors between Tasmania and Victoria, a dispatchable and significant renewable energy generator into the National Electricity Market,” he added.

Earlier, AC Energy unveiled plans to sell as much as 50 percent of its 1,600-megawatt thermal or coal energy assets to raise capital to support regional expansion.