Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has closed its second Growth Markets Fund at approximately US$3 billion, directing substantial institutional capital toward energy infrastructure projects in high-growth, middle-income economies. The fund targets regions where electricity demand is expanding fastest — including parts of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe — signaling that major infrastructure investors are recalibrating risk appetite toward emerging markets that have traditionally struggled to attract large-scale private capital for the energy transition.
CIP, one of the world’s largest dedicated renewable energy fund managers, designed GMF II to invest in greenfield and early-stage projects across power generation, storage, transmission, and emerging technologies such as green hydrogen. The strategy reflects a deliberate move beyond OECD markets, where renewable penetration is maturing and competition for assets has compressed returns. Middle-income countries, by contrast, face a dual imperative: meeting surging power demand while decarbonising existing fleets, creating a pipeline of opportunities that align with CIP’s development-to-operations model.
The fund’s closing comes at a pivotal moment for climate finance. Multilateral development banks and development finance institutions have long shouldered the burden of de-risking emerging-market energy projects, but their balance sheets are insufficient to meet the scale of investment required. A US$3 billion private vehicle — backed by pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and insurance companies — demonstrates that institutional allocators are increasingly comfortable structuring around currency, regulatory, and offtake risks that once kept them on the sidelines.
For the energy storage and renewables sectors, the implications are direct. Many target markets for GMF II have high solar and wind resource potential but limited grid flexibility, making storage a critical enabler of further renewable deployment. CIP’s track record in battery storage and hybrid projects positions the fund to catalyse the very assets these systems need. The capital commitment also sets a benchmark: if a specialist manager can raise billions for a second vintage focused on growth markets, the narrative that emerging economies are “uninvestable” for clean energy infrastructure is losing credibility.
Read the full report at Energy Storage News