Financing the largest offshore wind project in Asia-Pacific to date

Hai Long is a 1,022-megawatt offshore wind project located 45-70 kilometers off Taiwan’s west coast. It is strategic to Taiwan's energy transition, which includes a plan to achieve 40-55 gigawatts of installed offshore wind capacity by 2050 as part of its net-zero carbon emissions target. Upon reaching commercial operation scheduled end of 2026, Hai Long is expected to power more than a million Taiwanese households and to create over 5,000 jobs over its lifetime.
 

The project is co-sponsored by Canadian power producer Northland Power Inc (60%) * and Japanese investor Mitsui & Co. Ltd (40%)* . It is underpinned by a unique combination of feed-in-tariff Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Taiwan Power Company, and corporate PPAs. 
 

The USD 6.5 billion project costs are financed via a combination of equity and USD 3.6 billion debt financing through multiple tranches and currencies, with the involvement of 16 international and local financial institutions, including Crédit Agricole CIB, and seven Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) from six countries – UKEF, EDC, EFA, Eksfin, Credendo, JBIC, NEXI.  This transaction represents the largest offshore wind transaction ever closed in Taiwan and APAC, and has established a number of unprecedented achievements, including:
 

• The first offshore wind project in Taiwan involving a corporate offtaker, with 728 megawatt of capacity backed by a long-term take-or-pay corporate PPA;
•  Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC)’s first direct loan for an offshore wind farm project in Asia;
• The ECAs cover percentage of above 80% is the highest among all the offshore wind financings in Taiwan.

Crédit Agricole CIB acted as Mandated Lead Arranger, Bookrunner, FX Pre Hedge Bank, Deal Contingent and Interest Rate Swap Hedge Provider, InterCreditor and Commercial Facility Agent on the financing. Acting as a one-stop-shop for sponsors throughout the Hai Long journey for over two years and leveraging the teams across Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Europe, Crédit Agricole CIB has arranged a tailor-made financing for the project. 
 

As one of the very first lenders to secure credit approval last year despite the challenges faced by the Taiwan’s offshore wind sector at that time, we were allocated a final commitment of USD 207 million (NTD 6.6 billion). Thanks to early marketing of an innovative and competitive foreign exchange (FX) hedging proposal to help both sponsors with the significant FX exposures of the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contracts, we were mandated to execute a significant portion of the FX hedges across multiple currencies and tenors. 
 

Concurrently, Crédit Agricole CIB issued two green guarantees totaling USD 131 million for CSBC-DEME Wind Engineering Co. Ltd (CDWE), in its role as the pioneer of foundation transportation and installation contractor to the offshore wind project in Taiwan. CDWE is a joint venture between CSBC, Taiwan's sole state-owned shipyard, and DEME, Belgium’s leading solution provider in the global offshore energy industry. By employing this next-generation offshore installation vessel (ie. Green Jade) built by CSBC, this also helped the offshore wind project to fulfill localisation requirement set by Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).  We stood out from foreign and local competitors with solid client relationship coverage with both parent companies in Taiwan and Belgium and a well-recognised track record in supporting sustainable facilities.
 

The Hai Long project is another testimony to our ability to be in close proximity to our clients through the extensive reach of our Bank’s global platform, as well as to our comprehensive solution offerings in order to meet our client needs.

*Hai Long has been named "Offshore Wind Deal of the Year" for Asia-Pacific by the PFI Awards 2023
*Gentari International Renewables Pte, the subsidiary of Malaysia’s state-owned major, PETRONAS, will acquire 49% of Northland Power Inc’s 60% ownership in the project in due course.
*The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (“JBIC”) signed a shareholders' agreement for a joint investment with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. (Mitsui) of up to approximately TWD8.8 billion (JBIC portion) in MIT Wind Power B.V. (MWP) of the Netherlands. JBIC also provides a guarantee for part of an onshore equity bridge loan to MWP’s investees during the construction period.