Growing Europe renewables team reaps success as ING Bank commences funding for SMR’s Black Lough, Three Trees and Enros wind farms
Financial close achieved on the 16 April 2020 for the Black Lough onshore wind farm, and on the 25 May 2020 for the Three Trees and Enros wind farms, marks the latest Technical Due Diligence success for Black & Veatch Europe’s renewable energy business. The company was working on behalf of ING Bank, a branch of ING-DiBa AG, a major backer of renewable energy and sustainability projects globally.
“We have a wind energy team which understands every stage in the project lifecycle,” said Robbie Gibson, Black & Veatch Europe’s Director for Renewable Energy. “Our expertise in wind energy engineering, operation and economics is what makes us a trusted advisor for this kind of technical due diligence project; and we are extremely pleased to have supported SMR and ING Bank in reaching a successful financial close.”
Black Lough is a 14.1 megawatt (MW), six-turbine array in County Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Three Tree and Enros are respectively 4.6 MW and 2.3 MW (two and one-turbine) projects in County Donegal, Republic of Ireland. The projects’ sponsor is SMR. Black & Veatch’s technical due diligence team encompassed environmental consulting, civil and electrical engineering evaluations and leading-edge digital wind yield analytics. The team provided ING with a full technical assessment of the project’s sustainability, buildability and profitability. Black & Veatch also delivered construction monitoring services.
The Black Lough, Three Trees and Enros wind farms are some of the last Irish projects to be supported via the Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (REFIT) 2 Scheme, and in order to qualify had to meet tight construction deadlines. SMR’s confidence in the project was such that construction was initiated ahead of financial close. “The delivery of our due diligence while construction was progressing created a unique set of challenges. It required our nimble team to deal with the fast-progressing status of the project,” commented Gregory Dudziak, Head of Wind Energy, Black & Veatch Europe.
Markus Helmes, Vice-President in the Energy – Renewables & Power team in Frankfurt at ING Bank, commented “The professionalism and reliability from SMR and Black & Veatch was crucial for a successful financing execution even during a global pandemic. We are very proud of the achievement, and already look forward to the next opportunities to work together.”
Globally Black & Veatch has supported more than 56 gigawatts (GW) of wind energy projects, including more than 20 GW of new-build owner’s engineer experience. “As well as their own expertise, the Black Lough team had ready access to a wealth of Black & Veatch’s international experience,” added Dudziak, “So we ensured our support to the client was informed by global best practise.”
With Black Lough now operational, Black & Veatch’s support for ING Bank is continuing with technical due diligence and construction monitoring on the Three Trees and Enros windfarms.
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Editor’s Notes:
- Black & Veatch’s support for off and onshore wind projects extends over 40 years and covers every point in the infrastructure lifecycle from development support through to delivering major engineer, procure and construct contracts.
- Gregory Dudziak joined Black & Veatch Europe as Head of Wind Energy in 2019. His appointment augmented the company’s rapidly developing renewable energy team.
- ING Bank is a leader in sustainability, seeking to facilitate and finance the shift to a low-carbon future. The bank steers its loan portfolio towards the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal to limit rise in global temperatures, and has itself been climate neutral since 2007.
About Black & Veatch
Black & Veatch is an employee-owned engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company with a more than 100-year track record of innovation in sustainable infrastructure. Since 1915, we have helped our clients improve the lives of people in over 100 countries by addressing the resilience and reliability of our world's most important infrastructure assets. Our revenues in 2019 were US$3.7 billion. Follow us on www.bv.com and on social media.
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