Germany-based power group and utility RWE has set up a €75m venture capital fund to formalise its investments in renewable energy.
The group’s RWE Innogy clean-tech subsidiary has founded Innogy Venture Capital, "strengthening its venture capital activities, which it has pursued since 2008", the company said in a statement.
RWE Innogy had previously invested €50m ($68.4m) in eight companies from its balance sheet but future deals will come out of the Innogy Renewables Technology Fund I, which has an investment period until 2018.
Crispin Leick (pictured) has been appointed as managing director for the operational business, which effectively means he is chief investment officer, having been responsible for the venture capital activities since 2008 as a department within RWE Innogy, the renewable energy division of RWE Group.
Aiwar Markow, who heads RWE Innogy’s finance department, has become managing director for finance for the fund.
Fritz Vahrenholt, chief executive of RWE Innogy, said: "By restructuring our venture capital activities, we have taken a major step towards even more active positioning on the European Union (EU) market and further strengthening of our venture capital focus. This paves the way to future competitive advantage and sustainable, profitable growth."
Leick added: "The venture capital fund structure ensures our portfolio companies can receive all the benefits as a small and medium[-sized] enterprise, according to EU law. Our experience with venture capital as an open approach to innovation has been highly positive."
He added the fund structure would also institutionalise the group’s focus on exiting its holdings through having a set lifespan and by acting as a general partner of the fund with RWE Innogy as the sole limited partner it would "facilitate further growth with a setup that can be leveraged to have a larger platform over time" as well as enable transparency over the fund’s performance to see the management’s performance.