CIP's growth-markets clean-energy fund closes at $3 billion

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has closed its second growth-markets fund at $3 billion, a final close that puts the vehicle at three times the size of its predecessor. The firm announced the milestone this week, along with $1.6 billion already committed across nine investments.

The fund, launched in 2023, targets 15 middle-income markets where CIP sees solid fundamentals for renewable infrastructure: high economic and demographic growth and an expanding middle class. Its mandate stretches across Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America, with India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mexico, and South Africa named as target examples.

CIP describes the first nine investments as the sort of complex projects this fund exists to build. They include what the firm calls the largest standalone battery project in Chile, Mexico's first large-scale solar and battery storage projects, and Pestera II, which CIP counts among the largest renewable energy investments in Romania.

The comparison point is GMF I, which closed in 2019 with $1 billion and is expected to deliver roughly 8.7 GW across more than 50 projects in India and South Africa. GMF II starts with three times that capital.

More than half the new fund's money is already committed, so the early deployment risk is partly behind it. What remains is $1.4 billion to place, and the stated strategy suggests it will not go into easy deals. CIP said its edge is in originating, developing, and building large-scale renewables, a process that looks different in markets where the precedent for utility-scale projects is thin.

The firm's two growth-market co-heads made that point at the close. Niels Holst called the raise a strong validation of the strategy and of investor confidence in CIP's ability to take projects from origination to operation. Ole Kjems Sørensen said the fund expands the firm's capacity to connect capital with high-quality renewable projects in markets with a fundamental need for new energy infrastructure.

The size of the raise is its own argument that institutional investors have room in their portfolios for growth-market renewable infrastructure. The proof of that claim will come over the next build-out cycle, when the remaining $1.4 billion needs projects that look as good as the first nine.