Proximo Deals of the Year 2024: Powerful capital
Smarter risk allocation, rather than giant leaps forward, characterised the stand-out deals of 2024. Both banks and non-bank lenders wrote big tickets on occasion, but also stretched the terms they were willing to offer sponsors.
During a period of consolidation in the global project finance market, banks concentrated on improving deal structures and opening up new geographies rather than putting forward radical new structures or getting comfortable with radical new technologies. They have also made solid progress in the tougher sectors and geographies, as the list of Proximo Deals of the Year 2024 shows.
Everything from Indian digital infrastructure to US offshore wind is represented on that list, with electric vehicles appearing in three regions, and manufacturing making a rare appearance. Financial sponsors continue to expand their dominance in key sectors, including renewables and data centres.
There are also awards for bank deals, municipal bond refinancings, private placements and private credit financings. The last year has not seen any severe constraints on liquidity in most of the debt markets available to project sponsors. And those sponsors have made sure that those lenders are tightening their offerings.
Some of these winners will have a chance to win public recognition at ceremonies at Proximo's events in 2025. For others, tags and votes will be their opportunity for validation. But this was a distinguished and worthy list of winners. Congratulations to them all.
North America
North America Onshore Wind
Capstone's Wild Rose 2 financing is the first to close with the benefit of the Canadian investment tax credit, and required careful understanding of the new incentive regime, as well as Alberta's electricity market. It is likely to provide a strong benchmark for the revival of the Canadian wind market.
North America Solar
For their Cider solar project in New York, Greenbacker and Hecate put together a complex multi-tranche financing package that included one of the market's earlier tax credit transfer bridge loans. The deal is also a landmark for New York State's renewables ambitions, as its largest NYSERDA project and first ORES development.
North America Offshore Wind
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind
US offshore came back with a bang in 2024, with US developers adapting a tried and tested European financing structure - a disciplined financial sponsor joining forces with a deep-pocketed local utility. The $4.7 billion financing for Stonepeak's share of its Coastal Viriginia joint venture with Dominion also saw material advances in the sophistication of its supply chain, including a Jones Act-compliant installation vessel.
North America Roads
The I-10 Calcasieu River Bridge PPP featured a well-received private activity bond issue despite exposing investors to traffic risk and fixed toll rates. It achieved this through solid structuring and strong financial support from the project grantor, the Louisiana Department of Transportation.
North America Aviation
The financing for a new ground transportation centre at Reno-Tahoe Airport proves that the P3 rental car facility concession can be adapted to smaller airports using a careful bundling and allocation of work packages. It also shrugged off the legacy of the pandemic in the US aviation sector.
North America Social Infrastructure
PGCPS Blueprint Schools Phase II
This was the largest taxable municipal bond financing for a social infrastructure project, and built on the strong track record that Prince George's County and Maryland have developed in P3s. This also included a novel feature allowing for local residents to make equity investments in the project.
North America Storage
Condor was not the largest deal that Arevon closed in US storage in 2024, let alone any other developer. But it has the best claim to pioneering the use of hybrid tax equity to monetise the post-IRA incentives for storage projects.
North America Solar Plus Storage
Centennial Flats is the third financing that Carlyle-backed Copia has closed in the space of 12 months, a huge $1.2 billion debt package including construction, LC and TEBL facilities. Copia is now the name to watch in solar plus storage development in the US.
North America LNG
Cedar is the first project financing in North America for a floating LNG liquefaction facility, and features the largest non-recourse letter of credit ever. It is also the first indigenous-sponsored LNG facility anywhere in the world.
North America Refinancing
The keenly-priced $2.2 billion Brightline Florida refinancing proves that passenger rail projects can work in the US. The multi-series bond issue recognises the success that Fortress has made of this brownfield high-speed venture and offers hope for developers elsewhere in the US - including Brightline.
North America Digital Infrastructure
Bighorn - split between data centre and powershell facilities - was the largest pure construction project financing to close for a data centre in 2024 . The $4.51 billion Bighorn construction package included separate construction facilities for each component of a 300MW data centre campus with advanced cooling capabilities and a bespoke revolving credit facility to meet customer capex requirements.
North America Emerging Energy
Doral Renewables' construction debt for its Mammoth South, Mammoth Central I, and Mammoth Central II solar projects provided single-asset financing against a pre-NTP project. With interconnection issues increasingly delaying projects, this product might keep development flowing in constrained markets.
North America Manufacturing
The commercial bank market got behind this financing for a rare earth magnet manufacturing facility, and showed just how keen lenders are to get behind transition technologies, especially those with a General Motors offtake. This was a gold-standard financing for gold standard motor technology.
North America Utilities
Vicinity consolidates the use of corporate infrastructure debt structures in the US district heating sector. This debt package featured an aggressive underwriting commitment, green labelling, and the ability for the Antin-sponsored operator to expand its footprint.
Latin America
Latin America Water
Patria's Aguas Pacifico desalination plant blended mining, utility and residential offtakes to mark a way forward for financing sustainable water assets in Latin America. The project's debt package attracted levels of commercial bank support that were high even for a Chilean deal.
Latin America Mining
Esperanza was one of two stand-out water projects in 2024, but this Almar- and Transelec-sponsored deal was crucial to the expansion of Antofagasta and Marubeni's Centinela mine in Chile. The combined bank and private placement debt package set sizing and structuring benchmarks even for Chile.
Latin America Transport
KMA and Ortiz kept the Colombian road programme pushing forward with the twin financings for the Troncal del Magdalena 1 and 2 concessions. The debt packages feature both direct and synthetic peso lending, and the participation of three DFIs.
Latin America Power
MIP's Iberdrola Mexico Acquisition
Despite the tough outlook for independent power in Mexico, MIP succeeded in winning bank and bond market support for its ambitious project to bring Iberdrola's conventional power portfolio under local control. This was a complex undertaking that ultimately left buyer, seller, and the Mexican government mostly happy.
Latin America Digital Infrastructure
Ascenty is a repeat winner, but this massive, US dollar-indexed Brazilian reais issue shows what local capital markets can do for the right issuer. Brookfield and Digital Realty optimised the capital structure for this Latin America-focused data centre operator in style.
Latin America Project Bond
CHEC and CCCC tweaked the established Latin American receivables securitisation template with its financing for the fourth Panama Canal bridge project. This multi-tranche dollar issue used a UK orphan SPV for the first time in the region.
Latin America Renewables
Actis Energy's Enel Peru Acquisition
The $1.45 billion bank-bond package backing Actis' acquisition of Enel's Peruvian assets instantly made it the largest renewable generator in Peru. The bond component of the financing was the country's largest cross-border corporate issue, but was over four times oversubscribed
Europe
Europe PPP
The BRAVO4 consortium assembled a large and long-dated debt package for one of Belgium's largest ever PPPs. It should breathe new life into a European PPP market that was starting to get stale.
Europe Electric Vehicles
Electra's financing for the expansion of its EV charging network in Belgium demonstrates a move towards longer-dated deals with higher gearing as lenders become more comfortable with the EV charging sector.
Europe Renewables
This holdco construction facility spanned four jurisdictions and provided Aukera with maximum flexibility regarding hedging, technology and adding and subtracting projects. It was also a clear demonstration of the benefits of the NBB SSS notes structure for renewables development.
Europe Digital Infrastructure
Ardian's Nordic-focused data centre operator Verne puts sustainable power procurement at the heart of its operations, and should lead the industry in best practice. The PUE-driven green loan financing is just the start of an ambitious $1.2 billion programme to quadruple Verne's footprint.
Europe Emerging Energy
Northern Endurance Partnership Carbon Capture and Storage
This transaction represents a global first for the project financing of carbon capture and storage, and a big step forward for the UK's ambitions in this sector. The project, sponsored by Equinor, bp, and TotalEnergies, featured a complex package of construction and offtake agreements.
Europe Refinancing
Sonnedix was an award winner in 2023, but really caught the attention of the market with this multi-tranche, multi-jurisdiction, 40-project €2.5 billion financing. This carefully sized and structured facility is designed to future-proof the capital structure of Sonnedix's European operations.
Europe Rail
Alpha Trains reaffirmed the desirability of rolling stock credits with a market-stretching 30-year private placement component of its €1.3 billion refinancing. The debt package also includes complex new swaps, and green labelling, to assist Alpha in acquiring new sustainable assets.
Middle East & Africa
Middle East & Africa Storage
In a buoyant South African power project finance market, Mogobe stood out as a market first for standalone BESS and the government's BESIPPPP programme. The financing not only got local lenders comfortable with the programme and BESS technology, but it also included an augmentation feature.
Middle East & Africa Transport
GCC transport project financings often resemble structured sovereign or corporate risk. Not Hafeet, an ambitious freight rail venture that exposes its 16 local and regional lenders to substantial demand risk.
Middle East & Africa Solar
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar 6
The $950 million financing for a 1.8GW solar project reached a nearly unprecedented 27-year tenor on its conventional and Islamic debt facilities. DEWA and Masdar showed that liquidity is still plentiful for ambitious decarbonisation initiatives in the UAE.
Middle East & Africa Emerging Energy
AMAALA Sustainable Company for Energy
AMAALA is more of an off-grid mutli-utility than a microgrid, part of an ambitious effort to develop a sustainable luxury wellness resort on the Red Sea. The project's $1.1 billion soft mini-perm Islamic and conventional facilities came from a group of five local banks.
Middle East & Africa Renewables
Copperbelt Energy's second green bond funded an expansion of its flagship Itimpi solar project. The deal proves that capital markets can contribute to the growth of low-carbon electricity generation in Africa.
Middle East & Africa Refinancing
The $3 billion incremental financing for EIG's 49% stake in Saudi Aramco's domestic pipeline network was part of an $11 billion two-year refinancing effort. It required a small number of local and international lenders to write big tickets in support of EIG Pearl's robust credit.
Middle East & Africa Water
Cobra and Alkhorayef closed the first IWTP in Saudi Arabia, a 150km project designed to improve water security between the Madinah and Makkah regions. The $660 million debt package from four local banks backed a 35-year BOOT concession - likely to be the first of many given the Kingdom's water needs.
Asia-Pacific
Asia-Pacific Renewables
Blueleaf Energy showed what India's banks are willing to do in support of a well-structured quasi-merchant renewables portfolio. The deal is likely to serve as a domestic and regional financial benchmark.
Asia-Pacific Wind
This financing overcame lender nervousness about the Taiwanese offshore wind market by boosting government support for the debt package and attracting a large number of ECAs. It also broke ground in the degree of domestic financial sponsor involvement in the project's equity and its use of a market-first corporate PPA.
Asia-Pacific Transport
This dual-currency facility supports the decarbonisation of an Australasian bus fleet owned by this OPTrust/Foresight joint venture. The debt refinanced existing facilities and supports capex on the addition of new vehicles.
Asia-Pacific Digital Infrastructure
AdaniConneX Pune and Hyderabad
EdgeConneX and Adani pioneered the use of sustainability-linked debt for greenfield project financings in Asia. They set that benchmark despite the severe financial headwinds that Adani faced.
Asia-Pacific Solar
Australia's vibrant solar market finally got the big-ticket portfolio refinancing it deserved. FRV's AUD1.3 billion financing - from 11 domestic, regional and international lenders - was sensibly sized and structured to support FRV's future ambitions in Australia.
