An equity fund controlled by Global Infrastructure Partners is buying NRG Energy's U.S. renewable energy assets, including its controlling stake and economic interest in NRG Yield as well as NRG’s renewable energy operations and maintenance and development businesses.

The fund is buying the business for $1.375 billion in cash. The deal also includes support for the purchase of the 527 megawatt gas-fired Carlsbad Energy Center project.

In a separate deal, NRG and Cleco Corporate Holdings LLC entered into a Purchase and Sale Agreement for Cleco to buy NRG’s South Central business for $1.0 billion.

The South Central business owns and operates a 3,555 MW portfolio of generation assets consisting of 225 MW Bayou Cove, 430 MW Big Cajun-I, 1,461 MW Big Cajun-II, 1,263 MW Cottonwood and 176 MW Sterlington. It serves a customer base of cooperatives, municipalities and regional utilities under load contracts.

As part of the deal, NRG is entering into a sale leaseback agreement for its Cottonwood plant, a combined cycle gas turbine natural gas-fired plant, through May 2025.

NRG announced a reorganization and asset sale last year. To date, asset sales total $2.9 billion. The company says it expects to announce more asset sales during 2018. It also revised its total asset sales cash proceeds target to $3.2 billion.

Total operating power plant capacity included in the Cleco deal totals 5.1 gigawatts across wind, solar and natural gas technologies. The company also owns thermal infrastructure assets with an aggregate steam and chilled water capacity of 1,319 net MW and electric generation capacity of 123 net MW. Much of the project portfolio includes long-term contracts with a weighted average remaining contract life of 16 years.

NRG’s renewable O&M platform operates 2.4 GW of renewable power generation in 17 states. Also included is a project pipeline of over 6.4 GW of renewable generation opportunities across the U.S.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2018.

Global Infrastructure Partners invests in infrastructure assets and businesses. It targets investments in single assets and portfolios and companies in power and utilities, natural resources infrastructure, air transport infrastructure, seaports, freight railroad, water distribution, and treatment and waste management. The company has offices in New York and London, with an affiliate in Sydney and portfolio company operations headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

Cleco is a regulated utility based in Pineville, Louisiana. In business since 1935, the company has approximately 1,200 employees serving 288,000 customers in Louisiana through its retail business and supplies wholesale power in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Cleco owns nine generating units with a total nameplate capacity of 3,310 MW, 11,935 miles of distribution lines and 1,317 miles of transmission lines.