Finance & Private Equity

Overview

Global clean energy investment exceeded $2 trillion in 2024, according to the IEA. This surge in investment reflects growing confidence in the energy transition, but it also underscores the complexity and scale at which this deployment of capital across markets needs to occur. This will require investors to have a nuanced understanding of the technical, regulatory, and commercial dynamics shaping energy infrastructure today. We support our financial and private equity clients by providing deep technical, commercial, and regulatory insights throughout the transaction lifecycle. From early-stage screening and pipeline evaluation to confirmatory due diligence, we help clients identify and mitigate risks, uncover hidden value, and make informed investment decisions.

Capabilities

Our team delivers tailored assessments of renewable energy portfolios—including utility-scale solar, wind, storage, and emerging technologies—to evaluate project viability, development timelines, interconnection status, permitting, and revenue potential. We also advise on broader investment strategy, market entry, and platform development, helping firms position themselves competitively in a rapidly evolving energy landscape.

Our Services

From the c-suite to the frontline, we provide end-to-end strategic, technical, and environmental services for our clients

Case Studies

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Technical Due Diligence for Wind, Solar, & BESS platform

Evaluating a large portfolio of early to mid stage wind, solar, and BESS projects for an infrastructure fund including development risk assessment

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Offshore Wind OpEx Modelling, Global

Using our in-house OpEx model and combining our experience and client data, we assessed various O&M strategies including WTG selection, logistics, preventative and corrective activities, and a major component replacement strategy. The ultimate deliverable was an OpEx range and recommended strategy to adopt.

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Lenders Technical Advisor in Taiwan

Members of our M&A team served as Lenders Technical Advisor (LTA) Project Manager for a 500 MW+ offshore wind energy project in Taiwan including construction monitoring

Deepak Chinnapa

Partner | Global Service Lead - Strategy & Commercial

Deepak is a Partner based in our Hamburg office and leads the firm’s global strategy and commercial consulting practice. He joined Brinckmann in 2021 having spent more than a decade in the renewable energy sector within research and consulting. Deepak brings strong industry know-how and advises companies across the renewable energy value chain. Within consulting, Deepak advises a string of companies such as Asset Owners, Developers, Institutional Investors, PE Funds and Supply Chain Players, present across the value chain on key topics across the energy transition landscape. He has extensive experience in supporting companies on commercial due diligence work covering component and service-related M&A opportunities and provides analysis on the market and technology-related forecasts, asset owner strategies, and policy and regulatory developments. Prior to joining Brinckmann, Deepak worked as a Managing Consultant in Wood Mackenzie’s power and renewable business where he provided advisory services covering the wind, solar PV, energy storage, and power markets. In the past, he also worked in the wealth management divisions of Citibank and JP Morgan Chase in India. Deepak holds a B.SC in Business from St. Josephs College of Commerce in India and an MBA from Aarhus University, Denmark.

Chris Houston

Partner | Global Service Lead, Finance & Transactions

Chris Houston is a Partner at CoralPoint and Global Lead for the firm’s project finance and M&A services. Chris is a seasoned renewable energy professional with over 16 years of experience, covering onshore and offshore renewables. He has held senior roles across both project development and consultancy, including most recently serving as Director and Global Practice Lead for Offshore Wind Advisory Services at UL Solutions and prior to that as an Associate Director in ERM’s M&A services group. Chris spent six years as a project developer for SSE Renewables, followed by more than a decade in technical consultancy, where he has delivered complex due diligence and market intelligence services across over 30 GW of offshore wind, onshore wind, solar, and BESS projects. He has led GW’s of Lenders Technical Advisory (LTA) mandates, Lenders Environmental & Social Advisory (LESA) and ESG Due Diligence, Equator Principles and IFC Performance Standards gap analyses, and the development of Environmental and Social Action Plans. Chris earned his BA in Business Management at Glasgow University and his MS in Environmental Studies from The University of Strathclyde.

Ali Ghorashi

Partner | Managing Director, Energy Infrastructure Finance & Transactions

Ali Ghorashi is a Partner at CoralPoint Group, where he leads the firm’s Energy Infrastructure Finance and Transactions practice for North America out of San Diego, California. In his role as Managing Director, he applies his perspective to specific gaps in the energy market, providing independent, senior-led advisory to CoralPoint clients, with the depth of a large platform and the agility of a focused team.

Over the past 16 years, Ali has worked at the intersection of engineering risk, project finance and M&A, and energy policy, advising on transactions that span the full lifecycle of clean energy infrastructure. His practice covers onshore and offshore wind, utility-scale solar, battery storage, thermal generation, high-voltage transmission, low-carbon molecules, carbon capture and sequestration, and geothermal. That breadth is uncommon in a single practitioner, and it reflects a career built deliberately across technologies rather than within a single vertical.

Prior to CoralPoint, Ali served as Senior Vice President of Energy Infrastructure Finance and M&A at DNV, the global independent engineering and assurance firm. There, he built and led what became one of the largest and most diversified technical due diligence practices in North America, growing from a wind focused engineering team into a platform that served developers, lenders, tax equity investors, and private equity sponsors across every major asset class in the sector.

Ali’s core skill is converting detailed engineering analysis into the language of investment risk. Over his career, he has advised energy infrastructure funds, private equity firms, project lenders, tax equity investors, developers, utilities, IPPs, and federal stakeholders including the U.S. Department of Energy. That range of relationships, across both the buy side and the sell side, as well as across both public and private capital, gives him an integrated view of how transactions actually move through the market and what drives them.

He is a regular presence at industry forums including GreenFin, ACP Cleanpower, Reuters Utility Scale Solar and Wind, Infocast Project and Money, and Tamarindo, he’s been featured on Todd Alexander’s Norton Rose Fulbright ‘Currents’ Podcast, and has been quoted in Forbes, the New York Times, and Business Insider.

Dr. Ghorashi holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Science with Distinction in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bath, United Kingdom. His academic training in engineering systems, combined with more than a decade and a half of transaction experience, gives him a perspective that is both technically grounded and commercially fluent, a combination the advisory market rarely produces in a single individual.

Ali lives in San Diego with his wife and enjoys hiking, skiing, and playing tennis.

Sebastian Chivers

Co-CEO

Seb provides strategic direction to the CoralPoint executive team and helps to shape the vision and long-term growth plan for the business. Seb has spent his entire career in the consulting industry, building teams and solutions for clients in the renewable energy sector. Before joining CoralPoint, Seb was Managing Partner and Global Co-Lead for Renewables at ERM, the world’s largest sustainability consultancy. Prior to ERM, he founded and served as CEO of The Renewables Consulting Group (RCG), a global management consulting and technical advisory firm which was acquired in 2021. Prior to this Seb was President for the North America renewables business at the TÜV SÜD group, based in New York. Over the last two decades, Seb has worked with utilities, private equity firms, pension funds, insurers, industrial clients, and government agencies for on- and offshore wind, solar, and emerging energy technologies. Outside of work, Seb enjoys spending time in the mountains or on the golf course, where he is preparing his 4-year-old son, Ludo, to be the next Rory McIlroy.