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The China-CEE Fund may invest in Romania between 20 and 50 million euro in projects in energy infrastructure, high-efficiency cogeneration and energy efficiency in 2015, told energynomics.ro Octavian Vidu, director for Romania of the fund’s management company, CEE Equity Partners.
“We’ll probably make an investment to year-end between 20 and 50 million euros”, said Octavian Vidu, who can not disclose more about the investments. To date the fund has invested in the CEE (Central and Eastern Europe – n.r.) region in two energy projects.
In what has been invested so far in CEE
Areas of interest of the Fund are renewables: wind farms, photovoltaic installations, hydro, biogas, biomass, biofuels and geothermal. There is also an interest in conventional fuel based (coal, gas, oil) power plants and heat producers, waste-to-energy facilities, heat production and distribution plants and storage and transmission distribution facilities.
On the equity investment side, it invests between 20 and 60 million euro on average per project, with the possibility of increasing by debt (loans) the value of a project to up to 200 million euros. With the planned increase of available capital to USD 1.5 billion, the Fund may increase the ceiling of equity investments from 60 to 100 million euro.
The first energy investment in CEE was Polenergia, of some 70 million euro, which included 800 MW development pipeline of on-shore wind farm projects, 150 km gas pipeline from Germany to Poland, two offshore wind farms of 600 MW, 31 MW of biomass CHP (Combined Heat and Power – e.n) and 800 MW coal-fired power.
Also in Poland, a second wind project in Wroblew of 36 MW has already been sold in January (exited after only four months) for about 50 million euro, with a cash-per-cash return of 1.8 times value to investors (80% yield).