Athein, Singapore’s Renewable Energy JV, Aims to Raise $1 Billion for Solar and Wind Projects

Singapore’s IPP platform company Athein, established recently as a Joint-Venture partnership between four Southeast Asian companies, sets an ambitious target to raise $1bn in the next three years to fund its pipeline of solar and wind power in Australia, India, Philippines and Vietnam, currently standing at 2 GWp of operating assets and projects under development.

“We live through the Golden Age of renewables. Despite the fading subsidies for clean energy, despite the current economic turmoil – the inflation rates, the volatile currencies, the supply chain and logistics bottlenecks, 2023 will be another record year for capital deployment in green power” commented athein’s Co-Founder and CEO – Milan Koev.

With the high inflation rates, the first victim is usually the very basic utility –  electricity. In 2023, in key economies in Asia Pacific, the YoY increase of electricity cost is about 25%. LNG prices are 2.5 times higher than in 2019, coal prices have quadrupled.

Edmund Yen, Co-Founder and CCO of athein added, “With the latest announcement of EVN in Vietnam, raising the retail prices with nearly 20%, the wholesale market prices of Philippines and parts of Australia, reaching monthly average levels of 8 PHP per kWh and 0.20 AUD respectively, and the upward trends in India, we are headed towards a power crisis. A crisis in which businesses and households are desperate for alternatives.”

“As a result, LCOE of renewables in the region is on average 46% lower than average end-user tariffs in 2022,” concluded Dzung Nguyen, Co-Founder and Head of Vietnam for athein.

In addition, we are only 20 months away from the first RE100 milestone, the year 2025, which triggers the deadline for some 300 large multinational conglomerates to reach net zero. Wood Mackensey estimates over the next 3 years a CAGR of over 120% for bilateral renewable power purchase agreements in Asia Pacific. This translates into 56 GWp worth of PPAs. On the other hand, power demand is slowly recovering to its pre-covid levels across APAC, with projected by S&P Global CAGR of 4.5% for the next decade.  Coupled with the increased renewable targets of Asian governments from COP26, set to on average 62% by 2035, in the next decade, new solar and wind additions are expected to reach over 1,000 GWp.