As the renewables and other environmental markets mature, so they continue to innovate and break new ground.
The winners of 2016's Deals of the Year awards are testament to this trend.
| CATEGORY | WINNER |
|---|---|
| PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR | Mark Carney, Bank of England and FSB |
| BIOENERGY | Enviva Partners |
| SOLAR | Shams Ma'an |
| WIND | Veja Mate |
| M&A | Nordex and Acciona Wind Power |
| ENVIRONMENTAL BOND | Lightsource Renewables |
| IPO | 8point3 Energy Partners |
| SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY | New Forests |
| ENERGY EFFICIENCY | Renew Financial and Citi |
| CATASTROPHE RISK | PennUnion Re |
| WEATHER RISK | Swiss Re Corporate Solutions |
| CARBON | World Bank's Pilot Auction Facility |
Among the winners were Veja Mate, which was notable in the offshore wind sector for the fact that it did not have a utility as an equity investor. Another strong aspect of the deal was the speed with which the 405MW project progressed through the development phase.
The 52.5MW Shams Ma'an solar plant in Jordan was the first solar project in the region to be financed through banks, and could help serve as a template for other projects as the Middle East embarks on the process of weaning itself off fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, Enviva's flotation was the first time that a bioenergy firm had been able to benefit from being classed as a master limited partnership, a status normally reserved for the oil and gas industry.
8point3 brought a new model to the US yieldco market, as it involved combining two sponsors, First Solar and SunPower, which would normally be viewed as rivals. It is the first pureplay solar yieldco in the US and is also more conservative in its growth plans than some of its rivals.
Renew Financial and Citi collaborated on the world's first securitisation of a portfolio of energy efficiency loans, helping to create a new asset class in a fragmented market.
In the carbon sector, the World Bank showed ingenuity with its Pilot Auction Facility as it seeks cost effective ways to help reduce methane emissions and breathe life into projects that suffered after the collapse of the Clean Development Mechanism.
One particular area of note was the Environmental Bonds category, in which we were inundated with entries from the green bond market.
The strength and breadth of the entries in this category was such that we could not do justice to all of these entries in our Deals of the Year awards. An unlabelled green bond was selected as the winner of the Environmental Bond deal of year.
We will launch an annual Green Bond Awards in coming weeks, and all the entries that we received for these deals will be automatically entered into the awards.
To go back to the awards page click here.