Ross Garnaut’s Zen Energy gets $54m in debt for power pipeline

afr.com:

Green electricity retailer Zen Energy, which was once backed by steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta and now counts economist Ross Garnaut among its shareholders, has locked in $54 million in fresh debt funding.

Ross Garnaut is a key shareholder at Zen Energy.  Louise Gronold

Street Talk understands WA property developer Hesperia and ASX-listed Income Asset Management jointly managed the $54 million raise, tipping in a significant amount themselves. It is the first tranche of about $150 million worth of financing Zen Energy intends to raise for its pipeline of projects.

Although Zen mandated Azure Capital in January – as revealed by Street Talk – the latest round of debt financing was understood to have been done without it. Azure is expected to keep working on a chunkier raising.

Zen Energy has been around since 2004. It obtained its electricity license five years ago, and contracts electricity from 20 solar and wind farms. It has installed 35,000 renewable energy systems across Australia, and counts CSIRO’s NSW sites and the South Australian government as its clients.

It merged with Sanjeev Gupta’s SIMEC Energy in 2017 with ambitions to build renewable energy for Whyalla Steelworks, but the two parted ways a few years later.

In recent years, it has looked to strike out into producing renewable energy via two projects in South Australia, including a 200 megawatt solar farm Solar River and the Templers Battery. This, in part, paved the way for Azure Capital’s arrival.

Previously, it had relied on power purchase agreements with bigger renewable power generation players like German Wirsol and Elliott Green Power to supply green electricity to its commercial and residential customers.

Garnaut is one of Zen’s key shareholders, owning