Bluestar Energy Capital Enters Australia’s Renewable Energy Market

After Raising $100 Million in Capital, Bluestar Enters the Australian Market for Solar, Wind, and Storage

Following a $100 million capital raise, Chicago-based renewable energy developer Bluestar Energy Capital has entered the Australian market. It is focusing on early-stage wind, solar, and storage projects.

Steve Jackson, a former senior executive in Australia for US-based solar manufacturer and project developer First Solar and developer and investor FRV, will oversee Bluestar’s Australian operations, which will have their main office in Sydney.

Jackson said that Bluestar Energy Capital has one approved wind project. It anticipates beginning work on it in 2024. It will emphasize storage and solar energy projects.

Meeting Australian decarbonization targets is a major challenge, creating a huge potential to establish a globally relevant platform, Jackson said in a statement. I am eager to contribute to making this happen.

The company’s website states that Queensland, NSW, and Victoria are the focus of its operations in Australia. But it doesn’t cite or name any specific projects.

Declan Flanagan, the former head of the onshore division at the Danish wind giant Orsted, founded Bluestar last year. The company recently completed a $US100 million initial funding round from Flanagan, S2G Ventures, and Great Bay Renewables. Bluestar now has offices in Chicago, Austin, Sydney, and Dublin.

Still, the largest shareholder is Flanagan.

The company claims that its emphasis is on “early development” and “opportunistic acquisitions,” and it has four additional former Orsted employees on its senior management team.

It claims that its project pipeline, which includes a portion of its portfolio being developed by Nova Clean Energy in the US, already surpasses 1 gigawatt (GW).

This is a patient, long-term plan, according to a statement from Flanagan. The global energy transition is fraught with difficulties, and money-chasing investments are rampant, thus Bluestar’s approach of concentrating on greenfield development is especially important.