Citicore Renewable Energy Corp. (CREC), a Filipino-led firm, has secured $100 million in financing to advance the commercial development of its solar projects. The mezzanine construction green loan facility was structured by Pentagreen Capital, a joint venture between HSBC and Temasek. Of the total loan amount, $30 million has been committed by Pentagreen for the initial tranche.
The funding will be used to support at least six solar farm projects, with a potential capacity of 490MW, located within the Luzon grid. CREC President and CEO Oliver Tan stated that the partnership with Pentagreen is a vote of confidence in their ability to scale up and achieve their planned 1GW project rollout this year. The company aims to develop 5,000MW of renewable energy projects within five years.
The initial tranche of $30 million will be used to construct four greenfield projects, in addition to two facilities that have already been completed. CREC emphasized that the funding from Pentagreen is the first international institutional investment and will enable them to mobilize additional debt funding for their ready-to-build projects.
Pentagreen Capital CEO Marat Zapparov expressed excitement about partnering with Citicore Renewables to support their goal of becoming a leading green electricity provider in the Philippines. According to Citicore, these solar projects are expected to add approximately 691-gigawatt hours (GWh) of renewable electricity supply to the Luzon grid annually and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 430,000 tonnes of CO2.
The generated electricity from these solar installations will be sold through bilateral contracts and offered into the spot market. Citicore aims to allocate capital efficiently to accelerate the development of their project pipeline and achieve their planned rollout of 1.0-gigawatt of renewable energy capacity per year over the next five years.
