Nest, the investor that manages £16 billion in pensions for nearly a third of the UK’s workforce, is to partner with Octopus Renewables to commit around £250 million to renewables projects in the UK and Europe in 2021.
Nest said that investment would be the start of further commitments to clean energy as it wanted to ramp up investment in renewable-energy infrastructure and, in time, become a net-zero-carbon investor.
Octopus Renewables said, “For Nest, we’ll be covering a diverse range of assets, regions and technologies across all three stages of the renewable lifecycle. And we’ll also be looking for growth opportunities in the wider energy transition.”
The company said the partnership with Nest was a “significant milestone’, adding “It points to a shift in institutional attitudes to investment in renewables, who are acknowledging both their power to combat climate change and their potential for generating predictable long-term returns. It’s our hope that our partnership encourages other major pension schemes to make similar shifts towards sustainability“.
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