Key Capture Energy Announces SK E&S as New Majority Owner

Albany, NY – September 8, 2021 – Key Capture Energy, LLC (“KCE”), a leading developer, owner and operator of energy storage projects in the United States, today announced that it has signed an agreement to be acquired by SK E&S Co., Ltd. (“SK E&S”), a global clean energy & solution provider headquartered in Seoul, the Republic of Korea. SK E&S is an affiliate of SK group which is one of Korea’s top three business conglomerates. This transaction will enable KCE to significantly accelerate its growth plans and will allow SK E&S to build a market leading energy storage and clean energy platform in the United States.   

Founded in 2016 with offices in Albany, Houston, and Salt Lake City, KCE has 254 megawatts (MW) of standalone energy storage projects in construction and operations and a development pipeline of 3,000 MW of storage projects across the United States.

Jeff Bishop, Co-founder and CEO of Key Capture Energy, said, “We are extremely excited to welcome SK E&S as our new owner. SK E&S’s investment marks their confidence in our team, our strategy, and in the tremendous potential of the U.S. energy storage market, which is estimated to be a $8.5 billion annual market in 2026.” He continued, “Over the last five years, we have built a market-leading team and have taken a unique approach of starting with small projects, learning by doing, and using those lessons learned from developing, constructing and operating smaller energy storage projects to transition us to the electric grid of tomorrow. We look forward to working responsibly with SK E&S, project by project, to become the U.S. market leader in energy storage.”

SK E&S has made distinctive investments in the United States across the energy solution value chain in recent years which include: the acquisition of California’s largest behind-the-meter energy storage portfolio in 2019, an investment in Sunrun and the formation of a joint venture in 2020 to accelerate the adoption of renewables, the electrification of homes, and the transition to a connected and distributed energy system, and a recent investment earlier this year in a leading hydrogen technology company, Plug Power. SK E&S’s holistic portfolio aims to provide solutions to resolve complex issues that evolve from the energy transition and also create potential technological breakthroughs to provide total solutions for the green business globally, which SK E&S refers to as “energy solution”.

“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,” said 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 U.S.”

Onpeak Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor 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 and terms that were not disclosed.

About Key Capture Energy

As more large-scale renewable energy projects come online and intermittent resources are added to the energy mix, it is becoming increasingly important to keep the electrical grid stable.  Headquartered in Albany, New York, Key Capture Energy is meeting this need by identifying, developing, constructing, and operating energy storage solutions to foster greater deployment of renewable energy, create a more stable electric grid, and provide value to all ratepayers. Key Capture Energy is targeting 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. Learn more at keycaptureenergy.com.   

About SK E&S

SK E&S, established in 1999 and based in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, is an affiliate of SK Group, one of the country’s top three business conglomerates with about $106 billion in annual global revenue and more than 110,000 employees worldwide as of 2020. SK E&S is Korea’s largest privately-owned liquefied natural gas (LNG player) with globally integrated value chain from upstream natural gas field to midstream LNG regasification terminal and LNG carriers and to downstream city gas distribution, power generation, and district heating cogeneration businesses in Korea. 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 2.5 GW of solar, wind, and fuel cell project portfolio in Korea, and it is expanding to Southeast Asian markets such as Vietnam, etc. SK E&S currently operates about 700 megawatt hours (MWh) energy storage both in Korea and the U.S., including the largest distributed battery energy storage system (BESS) portfolio in California. For more information on SK E&S, visit http://www.skens.com/.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Key Capture Energy
Sarah Bray
[email protected]
832.226.2116

SK E&S
Changmo Kang
[email protected]
+82.10.8484.0125