Manulife Aids Pointe-Aux-Roches Wind Power Project to Get Funding

Manulife Financial, a Canada-based financial company, declared that it has completed the $117 million funding for the 48.6 MW Pointe-Aux-Roches Wind Power Project developed by International Power Canada (IPC), a fully owned auxiliary company of International Power. For the purpose of arranging a long term funding for the project Manulife organized and headed a group of Canadian life insurance companies and invested around $60 million in the project.

The Pointe-Aux-Roches Wind Power Project is situated in the Lakeshore town, located over the south bank of Lake St. Clair in south-western Ontario and around 35 km east of Windsor Ontario. The wind farm project has received all the ecological permissions and sanctions required for the building of the project and it is anticipated to conclude in 2011. The wind farm will incorporate 27 numbers of 1.8 MW wind turbine to generate a total power of 48.6 MW. The power produced by the Point-Aux-Roches Wind farm will be traded to Ontario Power Authority under the Feed-in-Tariff arrangement. The wind farm is one of the six projects that Manulife anticipates to be completed in 2010 in North America and the company has designs to venture into more such project funding in the year 2011. During the last five years the company has offered over $840 million as funding for 13 such projects in Canada.

Bill Sutherland, Manulife Financial’s Managing Director and head of Canada Project Finance Team, expressed his happiness for the reposed trust of International Power on his company to fund their Pointe-Aux-Roches wind farm to generate power. He added that his company leads in the funding of renewable energy projects and encourages mainly wind energy projects. He further said that Manulife funds projects such as Pointe-Aux-Roches that are eco-friendly and assist in the lasting economic development of Ontario, Canada and North America.