World’s Second Largest Wind Farm to be Financed by EDC

TORONTO– June 17, 2014 – Export Development Canada (EDC) today announced financing of EUR 125 million for Toronto-based clean energy company Northland Power (Northland), the largest loan EDC has ever provided in the wind power sector.

EDC is Canada’s leading provider of financing, insurance and bonding for Canadian companies of all sizes that do business outside of Canada.

Clean technology is an area of corporate priority at EDC, with a dedicated team to focus on understanding the industry’s needs and delivering the right solutions to help Canadian cleantech companies start up and grow their business internationally.

“Canadian companies like Northland have the potential to become world leaders in the cleantech space, and these are the type of companies that EDC wants to invest in to help them through every step of the way,” said Al Hamdani, Vice-President, Structured and Project Finance.

“When Northland grows, the potential of the entire Canadian cleantech sector grows along with it, which is an important economic benefit, but the environmental benefit of these technologies is an investment that will pay meaningful global dividends for decades to come,” added Mr. Hamdani.

The financing will be used by Northland to purchase a 60 per cent ownership stake in Project Gemini, a 600 MW offshore wind farm in the Dutch North Sea. Once completed in 2017, Project Gemini will be the second largest wind farm in the world, and the largest in the North Sea.

In addition to EDC, ten international commercial banks were involved in securing the total EUR 2.8 billion term loan, including the Bank of Montreal and CIBC. Project sponsors include Siemens, Van Oord Dredging and Marine Contractors BV and NV HVC, each contributing EUR 400 million in equity.

“We are very pleased with the extraordinary effort put forth by the project’s financiers, as financial close was achieved in record time for a project of this nature,” said Northland CEO John Brace. “As the largest project financing in the offshore wind sector, this transaction validates the high quality of the project and illustrates Northland’s evolution from a leading Canadian power producer to an international company taking on world-class projects.”

Once constructed, Project Gemini will provide enough clean energy to supply the needs of 1.5 million people annually while reducing 1,250,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year.

Project Gemini is owned by a consortium of Northland Power (60 per cent), Siemens Financial Services (20 per cent), Van Oord Dredging and Marine Contractors BV (10 per cent) and N.V. HVC (10 per cent).

In 2012 Canadian cleantech revenues were $9.1 billion, and are expected to reach $60 billion in the next 10 years. And 80 per cent of these companies derive more than half their sales from exports. EDC has made the cleantech industry a corporate priority. In 2012 we supported 33 cleantech transactions with a dedicated team to focus on understanding the industry’s needs.

Canadian exports grew by 3.2 per cent in 2013, and we expect growth to increase another 5 per cent in 2014.