Macquarie to shrink offshore wind operations after failing to find a buyer

Banking and finance giant Macquarie is to shrink the size of its offshore wind investments after failing to find a buy for its Corio offshoot.

Corio is one of a number of special vehicles set up by Macquarie in recent years to tap into particular parts of the green energy transition, including Aula Energy that focuses on onshore wind and solar and Eku Energy that focuses on battery storage.

The London-based Corio was set up in 2022 and has built up a pipeline of more than 25 GW of development projects in Europe, the Asia-Pacific and the Americas, prompting Macquarie to test the market for buyers late last year.

But, according to a report from Reuters overnight, it had failed to elicit any interest.

In response, Macquarie – in light of the massive push back on offshore wind by the new Trump administration in the US, where many of its projects are located, and an increase in project costs across the globe – had decided on restructuring and cutting down the number of projects.

“Given challenging market conditions in the offshore wind sector, Corio Generation is refocusing its global operations to prioritise the development of a smaller portfolio of projects which have the clearest route through to construction,” a spokesperson said in a statement published on Corio’s website.

“This will also require a restructure of the organisation to reflect that change in strategy. We are discussing this with our project partners and staff who may be affected by these changes.”

It is understood that Corio’s Australian projects will not be affected by the changes. These include the 2.5 GW Great Eastern Offshore Wind in central Gippsland, Victoria, Australia’s first declared offshore wind zone.

Corio appointed a new chief executive Samuel Leupold, a former head of Ørsted Wind Power, to take over from founding CEO Jonathan Cole earlier this year.