UK National Wealth Fund commits up to £200m equity to Fidra Energy's Thorpe Marsh battery storage project

Mechanism

The National Wealth Fund (NWF) is a UK government financial institution wholly owned by HM Treasury, mandated to catalyse private co-investment into UK infrastructure and industrial capacity. Here NWF took a direct equity stake — not a loan or grant — alongside US infrastructure investor EIG, jointly committing up to £445 million (NWF's initial tranche: £200 million) to Fidra Energy. The equity, combined with £594 million in new loan facilities from a club of international lenders, closed financing for the roughly £1 billion Thorpe Marsh BESS in South Yorkshire and is also earmarked to help fund Fidra's pipeline, including a 500 MW/1,100 MWh BESS project at West Burton, Nottinghamshire.

Thorpe Marsh secured a fifteen-year capacity market award from the UK government in March 2025 (commencing October 2028), giving the project a government-backed revenue floor ahead of this equity close. Fidra has also signed long-term offtake agreements covering roughly 80% of Thorpe Marsh's capacity with EDF, Octopus Energy and Statkraft.

Downstream implications

• Extends NWF's pattern (seen already in its Cornish Lithium and Roam EV

charging deals) of using direct equity stakes to anchor large, capital-intensive UK energy-transition infrastructure that struggles to clear purely private financing hurdles at this scale.

• At 1,400 MW / 3,100 MWh, Thorpe Marsh is described as roughly three times

larger than any other BESS currently operating or under construction in the UK, and the government frames it as covering up to 11% of the additional storage capacity needed under the UK's Clean Power 2030 mission.

• Signals continued state-anchor support for grid-scale storage as a

complement to renewables buildout, distinct from the upstream critical-minerals equity plays (e.g., Cornish Lithium) NWF has also backed.

Open questions

• Whether the remaining West Burton and future Fidra pipeline projects draw

further NWF capital under the same facility.

• Long-run subsidy/support intensity once operational — how much of

Thorpe Marsh's revenue depends on the capacity market award versus merchant/offtake pricing.