Friday 6 December 2019

BP increases its stake in solar energy firm Lightsource BP

BP is increasing its stake in solar energy company Lightsource BP from 43% to 50%, boosting the company’s investments in the renewable energy source.

It is buying newly-issued equity in the business to help accelerate the company’s growth, supporting its ambitious drive towards 10GW of developed assets by the end of 2023.

The latest move creates a 50:50 joint venture structure, with the funds to be invested back into Lightsource BP and used for further solar power developments.

Since BP’s initial investment two years ago, Lightsource BP’s activities have expanded from five to 13 countries and major projects have been signed across Europe, the US and Australia with a development pipeline of more than 12GW.

Dev Sanyal, CEO of Alternative Energy, BP said: “BP is committed to helping meet the world’s rapidly growing demand for low carbon energy. Solar, which is predicted to increase by a factor of 10 by 2040, plays a key role in this energy transition.

“That is why we want to invest more in Lightsource BP and to deepen our partnership. We want to advance the solar energy business worldwide and we can bring scale, capability and resources to make that happen. We are proud to be advancing solar alongside such a dynamic partner.”

Nick Boyle, CEO of Lightsource BP, added: “When we first announced this partnership two years ago, we made our mission very clear – that together we want to accelerate the growth of solar power worldwide and help drive the solar revolution.

“Although we have already made huge strides forward in both the size and number of our projects and have rapidly expanded our global footprint, there is still so much more we can do together.”