Lehman Brothers bankruptcy drags down SkyPower
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
Toronto-based wind and solar developer SkyPower Corp. filed for court protection from creditors last week because it simply couldn’t service its massive debt. The company is more than $250 million in debt, and it has defaulted on a $214 million chunk of that. The money was used to purchase 134 GE wind turbines for future projects, and Lehman — as majority owner — had been helping SkyPower financially. But after the investment banking giant went bankrupt, that support faded and SkyPower was left in a tough spot. The company is now hoping to orchestrate a sale of its assets — i.e. its development pipeline, its existing operational projects, and its stockpile of wind turbines — so it can satisify its German lender and continue on its development path.
Let’s hope the company can work it out. SkyPower is almost finished building a 9 megawatt solar farm north of Kingston that, when complete, will be the biggest in Canada. It also recently won a 20-year power-purchase contract with the Ontario Power Authority for a planned 64.5 megawatt wind farm in Prince Edward County, a couple hours east of Toronto. The company has a number of other solar and wind projects at various stages of development. It would be a shame to see these projects affected.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
