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Pension plan buying 40% stake in Anbaric
Aim is to invest $2b in Wakefield firm’s clean-energy projects
By Beth Healy
Globe Staff

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is taking a 40 percent stake in a Wakefield power-line developer and plans to invest $2 billion in its clean-energy projects over the coming years.

Anbaric is expected to announce the deal Thursday. The Canadian pension giant will invest $75 million to gain a 40 percent stake in Anbaric, creating a joint venture called Anbaric Development Partners that will work on clean-energy transmission projects in North America.

“The challenge for us is always to find investors willing to invest in the early stages of these projects,’’ said Edward N. Krapels, founder and chief executive of Anbaric. “They’re very difficult.’’

One of the key players in the deal, Tim Vaill, is a familiar name in Boston financial circles. Vaill is a former banker and former chief executive of Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc. and an adviser to the investment committee of the Massachusetts state pension fund. Now chief financial officer at Anbaric, he helped connect the company with the Ontario pension fund.

The 15-year-old company is in the business of transferring renewable energy from places where it is plentiful to sometimes distant cities or populous areas. In one recent project, called Poseidon, Anbaric is tapping wind and solar energy from six locations in four states — Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and North Carolina — routing it to New Jersey and then, via underwater cable, to New York’s Long Island.

The $127 billion Ontario Teachers pension group plans to directly fund three or four such projects. Anbaric also works on “micro-grids’’ such as those that power some university campuses.

“We’re going to put a significant amount of money to work,’’ said Andrew Claerhout, head of infrastructure and natural resources at the pension fund.

Beth Healy can be reached at beth.healy @globe.com. Jon Chesto of the Globe staff contributed to this report.