By Cherry Reynard, Investors’ Chronicle, July 6, 2022:
Amid febrile stock markets, renewable energy infrastructure trusts should be a rare sweet spot. They offer inflation protection at a time of double-digit price rises, high dividends when income is scarce and access to renewables as policymakers strive to decarbonise. They are also exposed to rising power prices. However, with a 45 percentage point gap in share price performance between the top and bottom performing fund for the year to date, they don’t all dance to the same tune.
The sector has been one of the great investment trust success stories. The first fund, Greencoat UK Wind (UKW), launched in 2013. There are now 14 funds with more than £13bn of assets between them.
However, as the sector has grown it has diversified. The early trusts were relatively straightforward, building and operating solar or wind farms, making money from the subsidies attached to those assets and the power they generate. James Carthew, head of investment companies at QuotedData, gives a different picture of the sector today: “There are pure solar funds, like NextEnergy Solar (NESF), pure wind funds, like Greencoat UK Wind, hybrid wind and solar, like Bluefield Solar Income Fund (BSIF), funds with some hydro exposure, like Downing Renewables & Infrastructure (DORE), and funds with really broad diversification, like JLEN Environmental Assets (JLEN).”
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