Accelerating the transition to clean energy: BeyondNetZero
As our industry scales up, the challenges of building and operating wind farms escalate.
Supply chain costs and constraints are compounded by skills shortages. Investments need to be made in the grid and transmission infrastructures. Developers need to navigate a rapidly evolving regulatory and public policy environment, as well as a complex industry ecosystem. Meanwhile, the services market remains highly fragmented, with multiple experienced but sub-scale players, and with companies currently lacking capital to grow quickly.
By creating a global services business, backed by strong management and investment capital, Venterra aims to help developers bring more wind power capacity online more quickly – which, in turn, means that the transition to cleaner energy can be accelerated.
Watch: Q&A with Lord John Browne, a Non-Executive Director of Venterra and Chairman of BeyondNetZero
Here’s a perspective from Lord John Browne, a Non-Executive Director of Venterra, and Chairman of one of our cornerstone investors BeyondNetZero, part of General Atlantic.
BeyondNetZero is a climate fund that invests in companies which help to reduce greenhouse gasses in line with science-based targets… we invest minority interests in growth companies that do at least one of four things: they either contribute to decarbonisation, bring new efficiencies, avoid waste, or enable the generation and distribution of electricity. In fact, Venterra is doing all of these things and doing them very well.
I believe wind power has truly come of age… my involvement in the sector started around 25 years ago, when BP started investing in renewables. Since then I have chaired Patten Energy, one of the world’s leading onshore wind operators. I have also served as the Chair of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering – the world’s most prestigious prize for engineering – which earlier this year was awarded to Andre Garrad CBE and Henrik Stiesdal, two people instrumental in the development and deployment of modern wind technology. This is a very important step, showing that wind power is now operating at scale, is here to stay, and is critically important for humanity.
The acceleration of green energy is part of the wider energy transition… but this is not a linear process and there will be challenges and miss-steps along the way. I’m convinced that wind is an important part of this transition, and companies like Venterra have an important role to play in its deployment and growth. At BeyondNetZero, we see huge opportunities for wind power in offshore areas around the world, and we look forward to creating the future with Venterra.
Venterra provides the means for a developer to create a new wind farm… today, there are so many different things that a wind farm developer needs to do before the turbines can start turning and electricity is sold. Hundreds of companies are involved. Pulling things together and providing a service to developers that is something we thought was missing. That’s one of the big things that attracted BeyondNetZero to Venterra.
We also invested in Venterra because we were impressed by the team… when you’re an investor, and especially when you’re a minority investor, you have to believe the team is top quality and that it will do exactly what it says it will do. This is the sense we got from the team at Venterra, and we are excited by the opportunity to build the company together.
We like to think that the companies we invest in – and there aren’t that many of them – are part of a bigger partnership with BeyondNetZero… we are very proud of the companies we invest in, so we talk about them a lot.. We also provide them with the type of skills they don’t have and the advice they want, especially in technical areas like the setting of science-based ESG targets. I believe the partnership between BeyondNetZero and Venterra is set to get closer-and-closer. When we invest in a company, we take a long-term view, and we aim to work closely with the executive team to grow the company to significant scale.
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