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SNIB — capitalised by, and mandated to invest on behalf of, the Scottish Government to back missions including the net-zero transition — is taking a GBP 45 million equity stake in Highview Power as part of a GBP 130 million funding round. The capital funds phase one of a 3.2 GWh hybrid LDES facility at Peel Ports, Hunterston: a "stability island" combining liquid-air energy storage with lithium-ion batteries, designed to absorb curtailed offshore wind output and supply grid inertia and short-circuit support that is otherwise increasingly scarce as thermal generation retires. SNIB's Chief Investment Officer framed the investment explicitly around curtailment and intermittency management as Scotland scales renewable generation — a direct industrial-policy rationale (de-risking a strategic domestic grid-infrastructure asset with public equity) rather than a purely commercial return decision. Global Trade Alert independently flags the same transaction as a "red" state-linked financial-investment-support measure, consistent with its blanket treatment of below-market public equity as a potential subsidy/competition distortion for global grid-storage-equipment suppliers.
National Wealth Fund) directing equity into grid-storage and clean-energy infrastructure, parallel to EU-level fund-of-funds support such as the 2025-11-25 EIF/Alantra Klima2 cleantech commitment.
chains rather than a targeted trade-control measure; no named target country or material beyond general grid-storage/clean-energy categories.
jobs/industrial-base rationale layered on top of the grid-stability case.
GBP 45 million tranche and the named co-investor list; individual ticket sizes for Centrica, Goldman Sachs, KIRKBI and Mosaic Capital are not disclosed.
announced separately from this phase-one round.