Danish pensions giant ATP invests $400m in clean energy and renewables

Fund joins growing number of institutional investors coveting the environmental space.

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ATP, the Dkr355bn (€48bn) Danish public pensions giant has made one of the world’s biggest commitments by an institutional investor to clean tech and renewable energy investment with an €292m ($400m) investment in a global renewable energy fund run by Hudson Clean Energy Partners. Hudson is a New Jersey-based renewables specialist run by former Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs bankers and was founded by Neil Auerbach a former partner at Goldmans, and founder and manager of the bank’s US Alternative Energy Business. ATP said the fund allocation would target solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and biomass renewable energy sources. ATP joins a growing number of the world’s largest pension funds including USS in the UK and ABP and PGGM in the Netherlands, that have made significant allocations to the renewables space in the last couple of years. CalPERS, the largest US pension fund is also reportedly weighing up increased commitments of $200m to a clean tech fund run by Khosla Ventures after having made hundreds of millions of dollars insimilar enewables investments in the last four years. ATP said its decision to invest in clean energy sources was driven by expectations of good, risk-adjusted return and would be classified as an inflation risk asset. It said Hudson would invest money in solar, wind and hydro investments in Spain, Germany, the USA and the UK, but that a large portion of the investment would be earmarked for expansion and development of energy solutions within less tested forms of energy, such as second generation biofuels and biomass.
Lars Rohde, chief executive officer at ATP, said: “ATP’s investment in Hudson Clean Energy is a new initiative in ATP’s climate-related efforts. We believe this investment has a lot of potential The investment will give us direct access to brand-new knowledge about climate-related technologies –unique knowledge that will be useful in our future investments.”

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