Reinova Partners, a new manager set up by former Brookfield senior executives Ralf Rank and John Stinebaugh, is targeting an initial close in the first half of next year for its inaugural energy transition infrastructure fund, Reinova told Infralogic.

The 12-year fund, Reinova Energy Transition Fund I, which targets value-add energy transition investments with downside protection in North America and Europe, including the UK, has a USD 800m target and USD 1bn hard cap, the firm added. It is being advised by the placement agent Park Hill on the fundraise.

The fund, which has according to Reinova already signed up an unnamed anchor investor, in May agreed through a new joint venture with HitecVision called Lirion Energy to buy six operating onshore wind farms with 166 MW of combined capacity in Ireland from Greencoat Renewables.

It is also close to agreeing a deal to invest in a greenfield distributed heat pump business in the United States, Reinova said.

The manager’s strategy is to invest across four themes: Clean electricity; decarbonization of industry and built environment; clean fuels such as recycled biofuels and renewable natural gas; and sustainability, Reinova said.

The manager, which launched in early 2025 and has offices in London and Greenwich, Connecticut, said that it is seeking to tap what it sees as a gap in both “expertise and capital” in the mid-market energy transition sector.

Many strategies often have energy transition as part of a broader multi-sector infrastructure strategy, the manager said, adding large-cap managers are focused on much bigger deals outside the mid-market.

Rank and Stinebaugh each spent some two decades at Brookfield, including in senior roles at the Canadian manager’s Brookfield infrastructure and renewables groups. Together they have invested some USD 7bn of equity capital across 60 deals in infrastructure, renewables and private equity.

Reinova has also hired a further six full-time team members, including former Macquarie Asset Management executive, Neil Gillies, who is based in New York and has the title of managing director; and ex-Octopus executive, Bilal Ahmad, who is based in Reinova’s London office as a vice president.

The manager also has on board five senior advisors, including a former head of Vattenfall, Lars Josefsson; and David Eichinger, who was previously CFO of the US’ largest food waste processing company, Divert.

A key part of Reinova’s strategy is to build platforms, which includes working with developers from an early stage to de-risk projects.

This typically involves putting in place such things as offtake and energy as a service agreements as well as fixed price construction contracts.

Once projects have been de-risked in this way and also reached a financial investment decision stage then Reinova would look to invest equity in them, the manager said.

Reinova’s heat pump deal – details of which have not been disclosed – has been structured in a similar way to this, it said.

“We structured the [heat pump] transaction to derisk investment and get downside protection – in this case [to] help [the] developer establish long-term contracts and derisk construction,” said Reinova.

It is also an example of how “rather than providing new working capital” the manager works “with management team to derisk projects within an infrastructure project finance mindset to help shape transaction to make it investible by creating a well structured integrated contract framework”, said Reinova.

The manager’s Irish deal with Greencoat is another example of the type of platform deal it plans to do.

In this case it has bought a portfolio of “mid-life” operating wind farms, which provide Reinova with downside protection.

It now plans to expand the assets through collocating them with other renewables assets, as well as recontracting and repowering them once they have reached maturity, said Ralf Rank.

Reinova, which can be a control or co-control equity investor, also plans to grow the Irish platform through similar acquisitions and developments.

Reinova sums up its strategy as being a “combination of an infrastructure real assets mindset, a sound well-integrated commercial framework and building strong, execution focused management teams”.

All this is “the key to building companies that can deliver solutions with attractive scale, impact and shareholder returns”, it added.

The manager is also exploring opportunities to invest in what it calls “business transformation”, which typically involves investing in say a heat network which it then decarbonises by introducing a zero-carbon fuel source.