Global Infrastructure Partners announced Tuesday it will sell generation developer and operator Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) to Tel Aviv-based OPC Energy and Israeli institutional investors. Terms were not announced.
Maryland-based CPV, which develops natural gas and renewable power generation, is one of about 40 portfolio companies owned by GIP, which invests in the energy, transport and water/waste sectors internationally.
The sale would include all of CPV’s 5.3 GW of generation in the U.S. as well as its development pipeline and asset management business, which operates more than 10.6 GW of fossil and renewable generation in nine states for 13 owner groups.
Incorporated in 2010 as the first private electricity company in Israel, OPC Energy generated about 5% of that nation’s electricity in 2018. It will own 70% of CPV and serve as general partner, with the remainder owned by three Israeli institutional investors: Clal Insurance Enterprise Holdings Ltd. Group (12.75% interest), Migdal Insurance and Financial Holdings Ltd. Group (12.75% interest) and Poalim Capital Markets (4.5% interest).
Pending regulatory approval, closing of the sale is expected in early 2021.
OPC said it plans to invest “significant capital” in CPV to fund future growth with a focus on renewable and combined-cycle gas generation. It said CPV’s leadership team will remain intact. “OPC has long recognized the potential in the U.S. electricity market,” OPC CEO Giora Almogi said in a statement.
Founded in 1990, CPV was acquired by GIP five years ago.
“We look forward to the opportunities created by our new partnership with OPC, which positions us well for our next phase of growth during a pivotal time as the U.S. transitions toward greener and lower emitting generating resources,” CPV CEO Gary Lambert said in a statement. ” … I am grateful to Global Infrastructure Partners for its confidence in CPV over the past five years, providing not only access to capital but credible execution and operations expertise that helped guide us through a significant growth period.”
Tom Rumsey, CPV’s senior vice president of external and regulatory affairs, told RTO Insider the company will continue to pursue natural gas generation investments as well as renewables.
“We are very focused on reducing carbon emissions from the power sector, but policy must align with technological capability,” he said. “As we’ve seen in California, without dispatchable power to augment and facilitate the growth of renewables, reliability is difficult if not impossible to maintain. Highly efficient and operationally flexible natural gas resources are exceptional partners to today’s renewable technologies, specifically wind and solar. We have very aggressive development programs for both.”
Portfolio
CPV’s portfolio includes an 805-MW combined cycle plant in Connecticut and three combined cycle plants totaling 2,500 MW in PJM, with a fourth, the CPV Three Rivers Energy Center, a 1,250-MW combined cycle plant in Grundy County, Illinois, southwest of Chicago, under development.
CPV, GE Energy Financial Services, Osaka Gas USA, Axium Infrastructure and Harrison Street announced the financial closing on Three Rivers in August. The $1.3 billion plant is expected to commence operations in 2023.
CPV is also developing a 100-MW solar project in Pennsylvania and a 50-MW solar farm in Massachusetts.
CPV attracted some undesirable attention in 2016 over its development of the Valley Energy Center, a 680-MW combined cycle plant in Orange County, N.Y., when Peter Galbraith Kelly Jr., then the company’s head of external affairs and government relations, was indicted in a federal bribery case involving two former aides of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. (See Competitive Power Ventures Lobbyist, Former Cuomo Aides Named in Bribery Indictment.)
Kelly was sentenced in October 2018 to 14 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to creating a $90,000-a-year “low-show” job at CPV for the wife of Joseph Percoco, then Cuomo’s executive deputy secretary. Percoco received a six-year sentence.
Kelly pleaded guilty to defrauding CPV by falsely claiming that Percoco had obtained state ethics approval for his wife to work at CPV. She was paid $285,000 over the course of three years through a consultant in an effort to hide the payments, according to trial testimony. Kelly also made sure that Percoco’s wife’s photograph and full name were not included in promotional materials for CPV.
