The Railways Pensions Scheme, one of the largest UK pension funds, is investing in solar energy through the Pensions Infrastructure Platform (PiP).
RPMI Railpen, which runs the scheme along with Railpen Investments, is to provide £20.3 million (€24.1 million) of inflation-linked debt capital to refinance a portfolio of 1,911 rooftop solar assets owned by Foresight, a private equity investor.
PIP is a platform established by pension schemes to facilitate their long-term investment into UK infrastructure and the transaction is similar to an investment made by the PiP Multi-Strategy Infrastructure Fund earlier this year.
The rooftop assets are geographically distributed across England and Wales and benefit from the UK’s ‘feed in’ tariff regime.
Mike Weston, chief executive of PiP, said: “This is a real example of the power of the PiP platform. A UK pension scheme has been able to utilise the platform structure and expertise they helped build at PiP to access a proprietory infrastructure investment opportunity that is a great fit with their scheme specific investment strategy.”
Chris Hitchen, CEO of RPMI Railpen, said: “This debt investment will deliver exactly the secure, long-term, inflation-linked cash flows that will help the railways pension schemes achieve our mission to pay members’ pensions securely, affordably and sustainably.”
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