(Oil Price) – U.S. clean energy investor Acadia Infrastructure Capital is launching a coalition with tech giant Microsoft as an anchor investor as part of plans to develop $9 billion worth of clean energy projects in the United States, Acadia’s Vice President Brian O’Callaghan told Reuters.
Acadia is leading the Climate and Communities Investment Coalition (CCIC) to which other companies apart from Microsoft will join.
Acadia is also in talks with firms active in other sectors, including retail and consumer goods, the executive told Reuters.
The coalition expects to help the installation of about 5 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy power over five years, O’Callaghan said.
“The CCIC’s reason for being is to accelerate corporate-led renewable energy financing with real tangible benefits to local communities,” O’Callaghan told Reuters.
Acadia Infrastructure Capital, which officially launched a year ago, said that its mission is to support the U.S. energy transition infrastructure through strategic mid-market deployment of common and structured equity and facilitation of major tax credit transfers.
The investment platform looks to address “critical funding gaps in clean energy projects,” it said last year.
Corporations including Microsoft are looking to reduce their carbon footprint by earning renewables certificates, while Microsoft and the other tech giants are set to consume growing amounts of electricity to power AI data centers.
Not all the increases in power demand can be met with renewables, but companies are trying to create a greener energy supply.
Earlier this year, Microsoft signed a global framework agreement to back renewable power projects that could be worth about $10 billion and buy the power that would be developed by Brookfield Asset Management.
The global renewable energy framework agreement provides Microsoft with access to a pipeline of new renewable energy capacity to support the growing demand for cloud services at home and at work, Brookfield said in May 2024.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
