Big Shot

Australian
Wednesday 20/9/2006, Page: 38

RENEWABLE energy producer Pacific Hydro, owned by pension funds manager Industry Funds Management, aims to double in size in the next five years. IFM chairman Garrv Weaven, pictured, said Pacific Hydro would invest $250 million a year "for the foreseeable future" in wind and hydropower projects, mostly outside Australia.

IFM bought Pacific Hydro in July last year for $788 million, after outbidding Spain's Acciona SA.

Pacific Hydro is building hydro-power plants in Chile, has formed a wind venture in North America with Western Wind Energy, and is studying wind investments in Brazil. "We're committed as an organisation to continuing our investments," Mr Weaven said at the Global Windpower 2006 conference in Adelaide yesterday.

But the company had a further $1 billion in potential wind project investments in Australia that remained stalled in the absence of federal Government measures to support the industry, Mr Weaven said.

China and India are accelerating development of wind power, luring companies including turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems A/S, as restrictions hamper wind farm construction in traditional markets, including Australia.

Achim Hoehne, a manager at engineering company Parsons Brinckerhoff, said the biggest markets in the next decade would probably be India and China. "Australia had a good market until about a year ago. Since then companies are looking for other opportunities," he said.

A venture partly owned by Hong Kong's CLP Holdings this year scrapped more than $400 million of projects in Australia, where government renewable-energy quotas have almost been met, in favour of China and India. Vestas Wind, the world's biggest wind turbine maker, and India's Suzlon Energy, Asia's largest, are also expanding in China.

"I would say the Australian market has seen a collapse, while there's a very significant outlook in China and other countries, but China in particular," said Mark Kelleher, managing director of Roaring 40s Renewable Energy, CLP's sustainable energy venture with Hydro Tasmania in Australia.