Blackstone Invests $3 Billion in CDPQ-Owned Invenergy Renewables

Funds managed by Blackstone Inc.’s Blackstone Infrastructure Partners have invested US$3 billion in Invenergy Renewables, the largest private renewable energy company in North America, which is majority owned by the C$390 billion (US$310.2 billion) Canadian pension Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ).

CDPQ and the Invenergy management team will remain majority owners of the company, and Invenergy will continue to run the day-to-day operations. Invenergy and its affiliates develop, own, and operate sustainable energy generation and storage facilities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The company is based in Chicago, with regional development offices in the US, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Japan, Poland, and Scotland. It has more than 175 projects worldwide with a total of nearly 25,000 megawatts of energy.

The pension fund first invested in the company over eight years ago when it acquired a minority interest in a portfolio of Invenergy wind farms in 2013, which included 11 projects in the US and two in Canada. In April of the following year, CDPQ added a second Quebec park to its portfolio by investing C$42 million in Invenergy-operated Parc des Moulins in Thetford Mines. Then in July of that year, the pension fund announced it had acquired a 24.7% interest in Invenergy Wind. In 2018, CDPQ increased its stake in Invenergy to 52.4 %, and in late 2020 it invested another US$1 billion in the company.

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Last year, CDPQ announced a climate change strategy that it is using as a guide to reach a net-zero portfolio by 2050, which includes a plan to triple the value of its low-carbon asset portfolio compared with 2017 to C$54 billion by 2025. It has also committed to exiting from oil production by the end of this year and said it will instead focus on projects and investment platforms that are dedicated to the transition to a sustainable economy.

In 2020, Blackstone announced it was targeting a 15% carbon emissions reduction across all new investments where the private equity firm controls energy usage within the first three years of ownership.

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Tags: Blackstone Infrastructure Partners, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), CDPQ, Invenergy Renewables, Renewable Energy, solar project, sustainable, wind farm

Jamie Dimon

Turn that frown upside down. That’s the message from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who believes the nation is entering the best economic growth phase it has seen since the 1940s.

Despite all kinds of economic malaise, he is pushing an optimistic forecast where even rising interest rates will be no problem. “We’re going to have the best growth we’ve ever had, this year, I think since maybe sometime after the Great Depression,” Dimon said on CNBC, speaking from a health care conference the bank sponsored. “Next year will be pretty good, too.”

In December, consumer confidence dove, down 12.5% from the year before, according to the University of Michigan sentiment index. Rising inflation—the new Consumer Price Index (CPI), released Wednesday, hit 7%, the highest level since 1982—has disheartened many. So has the rampant spread of the Omicron variant, with new cases running well over an average 500,000 daily in the US, the largest tally thus far in the pandemic.

But to Dimon, the solid condition of US households’ finances will prevail and restore people’s sense of comfort, with the economy rising as a result. “The consumer balance sheet has never been in better shape: They’re spending 25% more today than pre-COVID,” he said. “Their debt-service ratio is better than it’s been since we’ve been keeping records for 50 years.”

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That said, the stock market might not tag along with this core economic strength, Dimon warned. More ups and downs lie ahead, he cautioned. “The market is different,” he said. “We’re kind of expecting that the market will have a lot of volatility this year as rates go up and people kind of redo projections.”

Dimon also expressed optimism that the Federal Reserve actions will pull back today’s robust inflation, without damaging economic growth. “If we’re lucky, the Fed can slow things down and we’ll have what they call a ‘soft landing,’” he said. The Fed’s policymaking body’s members last month predicted three quarter-point increases in the benchmark fed funds rate. But Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank economists have forecasted that it will be four.

“It’s possible that inflation is worse than they think, and they raise rates more than people think,” Dimon said. “I personally would be surprised if it’s just four increases.”