Ropes & Gray Advises Nature Infrastructure Capital on Significant Investment in ECO STOR

Ropes & Gray has advised a consortium comprising Nature Infrastructure Capital (NIC) and Brookfield backed X-ELIO, who together have formed a strategic partnership with Å Energi Invest and other existing shareholders of ECO STOR to make a significant investment in ECO STOR, one of the leading utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) developers in Germany.

The partnership comes at a pivotal time for the German electricity market, given the significant expected expansion of the intermittent renewable generation.

In partnership with ECO STOR’s management team and certain existing shareholders, X-ELIO and NIC intend to invest the substantial amount of capital necessary to continue developing and constructing ECO STOR’s pipeline of utility-scale BESS projects.

This transaction represents the Ropes & Gray London private equity team’s second significant recent infrastructure instruction having advised on Partner’s Group’s acquisition of Exus in October last year.

The Ropes & Gray team was led by private equity partner Simon Saitowitz with associate Craig Jourdan and trainee Sandli Pandey. Additional support was provided by tax partners Andrew Howard and Chris Agnoli, and trainee George Longworth, and asset management partner Chris Townsend.