What we do

We get deals done!

Green Giraffe Advisory is the pioneering arm of the Green Giraffe Group, dedicated to pushing the next frontier in finance. We are the premier financial advisor for energy transition projects and investors. We offer bespoke financial advice, market intelligence and development services in all renewable and energy transition technologies 

50+

Countries

310+

Missions

267+ GW

Renewable capacity

Who we are

Green Giraffe Advisory draws its strength from its international team

Green Giraffe Advisory is an independent financial advisory company, focused on helping clients shape the energy transition. Based in offices on 5 continents, Green Giraffe Advisory is built on the expertise of 110+ professionals with project & corporate finance, M&A, tendering, contracting and legal backgrounds

Our Sectors

Other Bioenergy Storage & grid Solar Floating Onshore Offshore e-Mobility Hydrogen& e-fuels

e-Mobility

Hydrogen and e-fuels

Offshore

Onshore

Floating

Solar

Storage & grid

Bioenergy

Other

Blog post

Dear Vattenfall: Congratulations

Dear Mrs Borg, I am writing to congratulate you on your recent decision to stop the development of the Norfolk Boreas projects. I would also like to thank Vattenfall and you specifically as CEO for your global leadership. I could write this letter to many of your counterparts of course, including Mr Nipper (CEO Orsted), as alongside yourself there are thankfully many players active in our critical sector that are showing strong financial discipline. And that is the crux of my message: in the face of huge social and shareholder pressure to deliver new clean power I applaud Vattenfall for having stayed true to its primary responsibility; creating long term value for your shareholders and honouring your company’s strong social responsibilities.

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Blog post

Leading the charge – lessons from the UK’s experience of installing battery storage

 Pretty much every day the UK is installing more battery capacity than any country in  the world apart from China and more fundamentally has developed more markets than anybody else for those batteries  to operate in. At the time of writing, a battery connected to the UK grid can trade in 12 different markets which vary both in value and duration and unbelievably new markets are being developed as I write. So what lessons can the rest of the world learn from us and probably more interestingly, what did the UK get wrong. 

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Article

The Inflation Reduction Act at a glance

The IRA – how this three-letter act is significantly advancing decarbonization and disrupting global hydrogen market competitiveness   The Inflation Reduction act marks the most significant legislation in slowing climate change in US history. With hundreds of billions of dollars committed to the clean energy economy through tax credits, grants, and loan guarantees, the US market for renewable energy is set to explode. In this article, we discuss the significance of this bill and how this funding dramatically alters the domestic and global landscapes for the renewable energy and hydrogen.

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Article

The future of financing renewables in South Africa

Since opening its office in Cape Town in 2017, Green Giraffe has been involved in three renewables government tenders in South Africa, with the most recent milestone being the financial close of the REIPPP Bid Window Round 5 projects of Coleskop WEF, Phezukomoya WEF and San Kraal WEF – the first three projects from Bid Window 5 to reach financial close. The South Africa market is now looking beyond government tenders towards utility-scale projects in the C&I space. What the REIPPP program has provided is a blueprint for financing utility-scale projects in South Africa for various offtake structures, and lenders & investors are allocating large amounts of capital to fund them – bringing much needed energy online.

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Blog post

New York Bight lease auction – a bittersweet outcome

Wow! USD 4.37 billion bid for the New York Bight. Who saw that coming? Ever since the last BOEM offshore wind lease auction in 2018 those of us watching this space have traded opinions on the bids we would see in the Bight. It became the standard exchange over beers at every offshore wind conference since. “Will we see USD 300 million bid?”, “USD 500 million would be crazy, but we might see it”. Well, the high bid turned out to be USD 1.1 billion! We saw five bidders each commit more than USD 500 million for lease blocks. So what do we make of all this? Firstly, this is hugely positive news for the US offshore wind industry. We may once and for all stop talking about whether the industry is really going to take off. Oh, it’s off alright. The winning bidders include the who’s who of pedigreed offshore wind sponsors – including EDF, Shell, CIP, EDPR, Engie, RWE and Total. These are veterans of offshore wind who clearly see the US market as a sound investment. We also saw several newcomers bring sizeable checkbooks and mount competitive bids. This is good to see. Hopefully we will see the same depth and diversity of bidders in the upcoming auctions for North Carolina and California later this year. As we watched the live bidding unfold over three days, we couldn’t help but wonder as the bidding moved into the afternoon of the second day and bids roared past USD 500 million, if this wasn’t just crazy. Had these guys all lost their minds? By the end of the second day we still had twelve active bidders with the top lease block bid sitting at USD 900 million. No, it actually was not crazy. These were rational, sophisticated companies acting according to plan. Many of them had been strategizing, refining competitor analyses and running mock “Bight auctions” for months. The winners had carefully prepared. They were also well aware of the last auction results – not the 2018 Massachusetts auction, the 2021 UK Round 4 auction. The winning bids on a price per MW basis are generally higher than the winning bids for UK Round 4, but not wildly so. The market dynamics in the US logically drove higher bids. This brings us to the downside of these auction results. At the end of the day, the US federal treasury picked up USD 4.37 billion. Where does that come from? The very rational and sophisticated bidders of course. And why would a rational and sophisticated bidder agree to make those payments? Because they reasonably expect to make it all back selling the electricity from those wind farms. So, ultimately it will be the rate payers whose utilities buy that power who will pay the USD 4.37 billion (plus a reasonable return of course). Hmm. The New York Bight auction was a tremendous success and validation of the US offshore wind industry. Does the federal government need to make billions of dollars from these leases? No. Should rate payers pay billions of dollars more in their electricity bills to help sponsors recover the cost of these leases? No. Are billion dollar leases ultimately a good thing to support further growth of the US offshore wind industry? No. There are several approaches to protect rate payers while allowing bidders to continue behaving rationally. Massachusetts offers one example. In each future offtake RfP, the state requires bidders to bid less than the price paid in the prior RfP. This simple approach captures – for the benefit of the state’s ratepayers – what should be the natural cost decline as the offshore wind industry matures. The result will be to force future lease auction bidders to factor this dynamic into their bid models rather than assume the offtake market will bear whatever is needed to recover their lease bid cost. Onward to North Carolina!

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