Fiera Infrastructure Private Debt has provided $28 million in financing for European renewables developer Starlight Energy to build out its Alberta solar energy portfolio, a bet on the fundamentals of the province’s clean energy sector.

The follow-on development capital, announced in late February, was $5 million for two projects. That came after a $23-million loan in 2024 for five projects, said Stephen Zagrodny, the managing director of Fiera Infrastructure Private Debt.

“We’re always interested in supporting the clean energy transition,” he said in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada. “We feel this is an attractive portfolio of assets well-located in Alberta.”

Combined, the seven assets Fiera is financing are expected to provide approximately 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity, Zagrodny said.

Part of a subsidiary of Montreal-headquartered asset manager Fiera Capital Corporation, Fiera Infrastructure Private Debt has deployed approximately $1.5 billion into North American infrastructure projects, Zagrodny said, with most of its investments going toward renewables and clean energy.

Headquartered in Milan, Italy, Starlight Energy has over 12 GW of solar, wind and energy storage projects under development. It is a part of the NextEnergy Group, a London, U.K.-based company with over US$4 billion in assets under management.

Starlight Energy’s 9 Alberta solar projects

The relationship between Fiera and Starlight Energy was sparked in 2024, with the two companies connected through Selkirk Advisory Group Inc., a Vancouver financial services firm that is the loan agent for the financing. Fiera has a “long history” of working with Selkirk on renewables and infrastructure projects, Zagrodny said.

Fiera’s “flexible mandate” led to the “perfect opportunity” for the company to “come in and add value and create a tailored capital solution for Starlight to advance this portfolio,” Zagrodny said.

Starlight Energy’s Alberta solar portfolio consists of approximately 1.5 GW of peak capacity across nine projects, Marc Stachiw, a senior vice-president at the company, said in an email exchange with Sustainable Biz Canada. The assets are paired with approximately 700 megawatts (MW) of co-located battery energy storage systems.

The total capex of the portfolio could exceed $2.5 billion, he added.

Eight of the nine projects are in the Edmonton area. The largest of the projects, Castor North, is located in Paintearth County in east central Alberta. Castor North has 312 MW of peak capacity and is coupled with 125 MW of energy storage capacity.

The $5-million funding from February went to the development of two projects with a combined peak capacity of approximately 270 MW, Stachiw said. The two projects are entering the third stage of the Alberta Electric System Operator’s (AESO) interconnection process and could be operational in the 2029 time frame, he continued.

The remaining projects in Starlight Energy's Alberta portfolio are expected to be fully permitted as early as the end of 2026.

The two projects that have not been financially backed by Fiera are in early stages, he added.

Fiera comfortable in Alberta’s renewables industry

The decision to invest in Alberta’s renewable energy industry may strike some as unusual, given the provincial government’s heightened restrictions to its development.

Since a moratorium on renewables development from August 2023 to February 2024, Alberta’s government enacted rules limiting where wind and solar projects could be built, and mandated an upfront security for reclamation that is much larger than similar requirements for the oil and gas industry.

Plans for renewable energy infrastructure plunged because of the chilled market conditions.

But as a long-time investor in Alberta’s renewables industry, Fiera is “comfortable investing in the province regardless of market cycles,” Zagrodny said.

Fiera focuses on assets it believes are well-positioned to compete, he explained. Plus, there has been more clarity on the rules in the past few months, such as the AESO outlining a framework for the province’s restructured energy market.

“That seems to finally be providing stability in the market... We expect overall activity to pick up now that there’s more clarity in the market.”

Fiera expects renewables to remain a “strong subsegment of the infrastructure market,” Zagrodny said.