Foresight Group, the independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager, has made three new appointments in its Environmental team, which now numbers ten investment professionals.

Minal Patel, a chartered accountant with nine years' experience in the renewable energy sector has been appointed Director.  Minal joins from Royal Bank of Scotland where she worked within the Energy Project Finance team, leading financings for a wide range of energy projects across the biomass, onshore and offshore wind and conventional power sectors. Before RBS, Minal worked for five years at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi in the Energy and Infrastructure Structured Finance team.

Peter Bolton, joins as investment analyst from Gazprom Marketing and Trading, where he focused on energy retail, generation and metering transactions across Europe. Before Gazprom, Peter worked in PWC's Deals Strategy Team on projects across the energy value chain.

Charles Sheldon has joined as investment analyst after four years at management consultancy Oliver Wyman, where he specialised in financial services.

Foresight has seen a rapid acceleration in the pace of investment deployment in the environmental sector, having closed three ground-breaking deals in the second half of 2013.

In July, Foresight led the £81 million 15.8MW Evermore Renewable Energy CHP project in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, investing £20 million from its GIB-cornerstoned UK Waste Resources and Energy Investments (UKWREI) fund.

Meanwhile, in September, Foresight Environmental Fund (FEF) confirmed its investment of £4.7 million in PlasRecycle's reprocessing plant in Woolwich, South London, the UK's first shopping bag and plastic film recycling plant with a capacity to process 20,000 tonnes per year.

In December, Foresight and the UK's Green Investment Bank announced the completion of the deal to construct the £47.8 million 10.3 MW Birmingham BioPower Limited renewable energy plant in Tyseley, which uses proven innovative gasification technology from North America, in which Foresight's UKWREI fund has invested £6.2 million.

Andrew Page, Partner and Co-head of Environmental at Foresight said:

"We are delighted that Minal, Peter and Charlie have joined our team, which combines senior management experience within the recycling, waste and renewable energy generation sectors with extensive industrial, engineering, operational management and financial expertise. We anticipate activity across the sector will continue to grow over the next few years, with institutional investors and local pension funds finding the opportunity to invest alongside the UK's Green Investment Bank in this dynamic sector increasingly attractive."