World’s largest sovereign wealth fund signals battery storage investment

Norway’s enormous sovereign wealth fund is flexing its trillions toward the battery storage industry for the first time.

Already investing in unlisted renewables since 2019, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (Statens pensjonsfond utland), operated by the Norges Bank Investment Management, is now looking to make its first investments in battery energy storage systems.

According to a Reuters report, the fund’s head of energy and infrastructure, Harald von Heyden, told an energy conference in Oslo: “We also want to really do our first big battery investments.” He added that it had not given up on energy assets in the United States, saying: “We are more careful maybe than before, but we’re not closing the door,” referring to U.S. energy investment.

The size of the fund, benchmarked at around $2.1 trillion in February 2026, with the money originally coming from oil, makes investing in batteries more complex. The fund’s minimum investment size is about $1.2 billion, and it will not take more than a 50% stake in projects.

Previously, batteries had not met those criteria, von Heyden told Reuters, noting that projects had been too small for the fund’s scale. “But now the battery centers are going even bigger and bigger … So we’re really looking for that company in the battery space,” he said, declining to provide details on markets or partners.

Previous energy investments have included Iberdrola in Spain and RWE. Separately, Reuters reported that the Dutch government sold 46% of grid operator TenneT’s German unit to an investor consortium that included the Norwegian fund.

The fund returned 15.1% in 2025, translating to 1,526 billion kroner or some $160 billion.