CEE Group acquires 50th renewable energy power project
Hamburg – The Hamburg-based CEE reaches a new milestone – with its latest acquisition, the asset manager has increased its portfolio to 50 wind and solar farms. The total capacity of all renewable energy sources under the management of CEE has therefore risen to about 630 megawatts (MW).
The Hamburg asset manager CEE continues to expand its portfolio and has acquired the Schmölln wind farm in Brandenburg. The seller is juwi Energieprojekte GmbH. The wind farm consists of four turbines (Vestas V126). The hub height is 137 m and the rotor diameter 126 m. The wind farm’s total capacity amounts to 13.2 megawatts (MW). CEE Operations GmbH will be responsible for the commercial management, while juwi Operations & Maintenance GmbH will oversee the technical operations.
This is the sixth project that CEE and juwi have successfully implemented together. Detlef Schreiber, CEO of the CEE Group says: “By acquiring the Schmölln wind farm, we have again managed to expand our portfolio in an extremely challenging environment. Working jointly with our reliable partners, we also plan to grow outside our core markets.”
Michael Class, the juwi Group’s CEO, says: Schmölln is the first wind farm that juwi has implemented in Brandenburg. We are therefore delighted to have handed it over to a long-standing partner.” In order to slow climate change with further wind energy projects in the future, Class calls for early improvements in the current design of the tendering system: “To correct the impending market distortions from 2017, changes are required, including a special tendering system for wind energy, as is set out, for example, in the paper on the exploratory talks to form a grand coalition. This must now be put into effect!”
50 CEE power plants cover the energy needs of some 900,000 people
In 2017, CEE energy farms will probably produce about 970,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy from renewable sources and thus deliver green power to some 230,000 four-person households. CEE’s CEO Detlef Schreiber remarks: “It is impressive to see that our 50 wind and solar farms could theoretically supply all the inhabitants of the financial metropolis Frankfurt am Main with renewable energy.”
CEE’s energy parks are located in Germany, France and the UK. With annual revenue of about EUR 100 million, CEE remains one of the largest independent producers of green power in Germany. CEE’s 22 wind farms and 28 solar farms each account for about one half of revenue in Germany and other countries. The biggest project is in Alhorn in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony). There, solar cells were installed on the former airfield of a now disused regional airport. Under ideal conditions, they can generate more than 50 MW.
The juwi group is one of the world’s leading companies in the area of renewable energy. The renewable energy pioneer with a strong regional presence offers project development and EPC services as well as products and solutions for the energy turnaround. Company activities are mainly projects with solar and wind. The juwi group was established in 1996 in Rhineland-Palatinate/Germany. Since the end of 2014, Mannheim based utility MVV Energie AG has been partner and majority shareholder (63%) of the juwi Group. juwi has about 1,000 employees worldwide, branches on all continents and is actively engaged in various projects all over the globe. Working together with passion to implement renewable energy economically and reliably is what drives us.
So far, juwi has realized more than 950 wind turbines with a total capacity of more than. 2,100 megawatts at more than 150 sites globally. In the solar segment, more than 1,600 projects with a total capacity of around 2,300 megawatts have been designed and constructed. Combined, these energy systems produce around 7.7 billion kilowatt hours of clean energy per year, equaling the annual demand of more than 2.5 million German households. Within the past 20 years, juwi has initiated an investment volume of around 8.6 billion euros to realize these projects.
CEE Group
The CEE Group, whose head office is in Hamburg, is a private equity group that specialises in investing in physical assets and manages assets of about EUR 1.3 billion. Equity investments are made in energy production projects primarily in wind and solar PV as well as in related technology firms. It has entered into a strategic alliance with RWE Innogy to cooperate in technology investments in young companies. The CEE Group’s investors are just a few institutional investors and family offices in Germany with a long-term interest in the market for investments in renewables and physical assets. The CEE Group was acquired by Brookfield Asset Management, a global alternative asset manager in December 2017.