Record renewable energy production for Commerz Real

Infrastructure owned by Commerz Real’s funds have reached a record level of renewable energy production, the group said yesterday. The wind farms and solar parks it manages produced more than three terawatt-hours of green electricity in 2022.

In the past year the production of green electricity in the managed funds increased by more than 15%. This growth was the result of investments in European wind farms and solar parks for institutional fund products, as well as for the retail fund Klimavest.

“Thanks to the ongoing demand on the part of our institutional and private investors, we have been able to continually expand our renewable energy portfolios,” said Yves-Maurice Radwan, head of green deal infrastructure, Commerz Real. “In doing so we are diversifying in terms of geography, technology, manufacturers and the marketing channels for the generated electricity.”

Commerz Real’s investments are making an active contribution to the European energy transition, he said.

For the first time ever last year the renewable energy plants in which funds or mandates managed by Commerz Real have a stake generated a total power volume of 3,040,403,522 kilowatt-hours – about three terawatt-hours.

This is equivalent to the electricity consumption of around 935,000 two-person households in Germany, based on figures from Germany’s Federal Statistical Office for 2020. Nearly two terawatt-hours were accounted for by the shareholdings of the funds and mandates of Commerz Real itself.

The group, the real assets subsidiary of Commerzbank, plans to continue to expand its infrastructure portfolios’ renewable energy generation capacity and it expects further growth in electricity production in the current year.

The asset manager recently acquired a shareholding in a French wind and solar portfolio (installed capacity of 169 megawatts), five solar parks to be constructed in Sweden (installed capacity of 246 megawatts) and five wind energy plants in Finland (installed capacity of 28.5 megawatts) for its funds.

Commerz Real has been investing in solar energy since 2005 and in wind energy since 2016. At present the company manages more than 50 solar power stations as well as more than 40 onshore and offshore wind parks in Germany and Europe; these have a total installed capacity of approximately 1.5 gigawatts.