North Star Funding, $2T Clean Energy Investment, Yokogawa Acquires BaxEnergy

UK's North Star secures funding for 40 new offshore wind service vessels by 2040. The IEA reports clean energy investment will hit $2 trillion in 2024, though challenges remain in developing economies. Yokogawa acquires BaxEnergy and Lotus Infrastructure Partners acquires PNE AG's U.S. renewable business.



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Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor.com.



UK based North Star has secured up to 500 million in debt investment to fast track tech's goal of adding 40 hybrid service providers. Operation vehicles to its fleet by 2040. The funding package includes term facilities and committed resources from institutional investors and banks. The capital infusion will support North Star's continued growth in the offshore wind market.



The company currently has several new belt SOVs in operation and under construction for major offshore wind projects to fill 40 SOVs can't come soon enough.



Philip Totaro: Indeed. And they've, as you mentioned, they've already got a fleet of. SOVs operational for various projects around Europe. These new ones where, I mean, 40, by 2040 is, is quite ambitious.



That's, one, one per more than one per year. This is obviously going to come in handy for what the industry needs. And more importantly, it'll give them the option to be able to re flag or re domesticate those vessels for use in, other markets where they're going to be needed, like the U. S., potentially, again, up to a point where we have Jones Act issues or markets like South Korea, Brazil Taiwan, etc. So, it's much needed.



Joel Saxum: So, for those of you who don't know, or new to offshore wind, or haven't followed the program before, an SOV is basically a floating hotel for all the offshore wind workers.



It has a lot of deck space, usually has a small crane, not a big work crane, but enough to move things around on deck, or, or transition some, some gear that's needed, some tools, or some equipment to the transition piece on an offshore ship. Wind turbine. So basically, these are the big vessels that kind of are resident out in a wind farm.



They'll go out for a couple weeks at a time until they have to do crew changes. Sometimes even doing crew changes at sea where the vessel just stays out there and a little transfer boat comes and moves people around. But these are the big vessels. These SOVs are the things that make the wind farms tick offshore.



Without them they're not going to stay up and running for very long.



Allen Hall: The International Energy Agency reports that investment in clean energy technologies, including renewables, will be twice that of fossil fuels this year. Global spending on sectors such as wind, solar, grids, EV, nuclear, and energy storage is expected to reach about 2 trillion in 2024, while oil, gas, and coal receive dollars.



However, the IEA warns a persistent low investment in clean energy in emerging and developing economies due to high costs of capital. And Phil, we've seen this play out in Asia at the moment and in Africa.



Philip Totaro: Yes,