Italy's Eni and Norway-based private equity company HitecVision have established a joint venture company, Vargronn, to focus on Norwegian renewable energy projects.
Vargronn will develop, construct, operate and finance clean projects with an ambition to reach installed renewables capacity of 1 GW towards 2030. It will participate in the upcoming Norwegian government license round for offshore wind.
Vargronn's chief executive is Olav Hetland, who was previously senior vice president for various business units relating to wind and solar at Norwegian state-controlled utility Statkraft, Europe's largest generator of renewable energy.
Eni will hold 69.6pc and HitecVision 30.4pc in Vargronn. The firm also support Norwegian independent Var Energi — another Eni, HitecVision joint venture with an identical ownership structure — to reduce climate emissions. Eni is targeting a reduction of 80pc in net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its operations and from the use of its energy products by customers by 2050. And it aims to reach an installed renewables capacity of 55GW by that same year, up from just 0.3GW currently.
Vargronn's formation follows similar moves by other European oil companies. In September, trading firm Trafigura established Nala Renewables alongside fund manager IFM Investors to build a renewable energy portfolio, targeting 2GW of projects in five years. In January, Spanish integrated Cepsa and Abu Dhabi's renewable energy group Masdar formed Cepsa Masdar Renovables to develop renewable energy projects in Spain and Portugal.
