Seoul-headquartered clean energy company SK E&S has agreed to acquire Key Capture Energy (KCE), a leading developer, owner and operator of energy storage projects in the United States. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
The transaction is expected to enable Albany, New York-based KCE to significantly accelerate its growth plans, and allow SK E&S to build a market-leading energy storage and clean energy platform in the US. SK E&S is an affiliate of SK Group, one of South Korea's top three conglomerates.
Founded in 2016 with offices in Albany, Houston, and Salt Lake City, KCE has 254 megawatts (MW) of standalone energy storage projects either under construction or in operation, and a development pipeline of 3,000MW of storage projects across the US.
"KCE's impressive team, with deep expertise in energy storage coupled with their proven project development, construction and operations capabilities, opens the door to tremendous opportunities to advance the energy transition," says Kyungyeol Song, head of EQ-TF of SK E&S.
"This acquisition further aligns our business with the ongoing shift towards a cleaner energy future, and we are excited to leverage our resources together with KCE to build a next-generation, market-leading platform in the energy solution sector in the US," Song adds.
Jeff Bishop, KCE co-founder and chief executive officer, points to the tremendous potential of the US energy storage market, which is estimated to be worth US$8.5 billion by 2026.
Onpeak Capital served as the exclusive financial adviser to KCE, and Sidley Austin LLP served as legal counsel. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021, subject to customary conditions.
SK E&S is Korea's largest privately-owned liquefied natural gas (LNG) player with a globally integrated value chain from upstream natural gas field to midstream LNG regasification terminal and LNG carriers, to downstream city gas distribution, power generation, and district heating co-generation businesses.
In addition to the strong LNG value chain, SK E&S invests mainly in four growth sectors: renewables, energy solution, hydrogen and clean LNG with carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology.
In the renewables and energy solution sectors, SK E&S is a leading renewable energy generator with more than 2.5GW of solar, wind, and fuel cell project portfolio in Korea. The company is expanding to Southeast Asian markets such as Vietnam. It currently operates about 700 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy storage both in Korea and the US, including the largest distributed battery energy storage system (BESS) portfolio in California.
KCE aims to have more than 1 gigawatt (GW) of battery storage projects in operation in New York, New England, and Texas by the close of 2023, under a variety of offtake contracts.
