A warm welcome to all joining the presentation of Aker Horizons first quarter results. My name is Kristian Røkke, CEO of Aker Horizons. With me today are Nanna Tollefsen, CFO of Aker Horizons, who will review the financials, and Mary Quaney, CEO of Mainstream Renewable Power, who will present the company's main developments. As well as Ciaran O'Brien, who will join us for a deep dive on the Chilean power market. I will keep my remarks somewhat briefer than normal to allow time for this market deep dive. In the first quarter, Aker Horizons saw its net asset value increase from NOK 15.1 billion- NOK 15.8 billion, the main driver being the increase in Aker Carbon Capture.
Aker Horizons maintain a strong financial position with a cash holding of 3.8 billion NOK and an undrawn credit facility of EUR 500 million, giving available liquidity of 9.5 billion NOK. Green industry, broadly speaking, continues to face obstacles in the form of slower than anticipated FIDs, inflationary pressures, and supply chain disruption in the short term. Governments' and corporations' strong commitment towards the transition to a low carbon economy, however, ensures a positive long-term outlook. For carbon capture, we are experiencing continued positive momentum with solid progress on our projects in Norway and the Netherlands, and new major project opportunities opening up elsewhere in Europe, backed by government support.
In offshore wind, the Norwegian government followed up its pledge to have the first large-scale wind parks in operation by 2030, with the announcement of Norway's first area allocation round in the second half of 2023. Massive investments are being made, driven by increased targets for 2030, with a seven-fold increase in the Baltic Sea and two-fold increase in the North Sea to 120 GW by 2030, as was communicated last week at the North Sea Summit. For hydrogen, 2022 was a disappointment for the hydrogen economy, but 2023 has started off stronger with a more stable PPA market and firmer interest for offtake, which are key factors for hydrogen and Power-to-X. There have been several positive regulatory developments. The EU is firming up incentives to accelerate the deployment of hydrogen, CCS, and offshore wind.
For instance, the European Commission recently published plans for a European Hydrogen Bank to speed up green hydrogen production in Europe, with the aim of bridging the cost gap between renewable hydrogen and fossil fuels. This autumn, the bank will launch a first EUR 800 million green hydrogen auction that will award producers of hydrogen a fixed subsidy per kilogram of hydrogen produced for up to 10 years. The pilot auction and subsequent auctions will be financed by the Innovation Fund and be open for Norwegian projects. Another important development is the Net-Zero Industry Act proposed by the European Commission. The proposed legislations brings forth ambitious goals for CCS and simplified regulatory procedures to accelerate the industry. The target of an annual injection capacity of at least 50 million tons of CO2 by 2030 will provide CO2 capture in Europe a solid boost.
Turning to Aker Carbon Capture, the company made significant progress on its projects this quarter. At Brevik CCS, all waste heat recovery units and direct contact cooler internals have been installed. Additionally, all columns and CO2 storage tanks arrived on site. Installation will accelerate throughout 2023, and once complete, the plant will capture 400,000 tons of CO2 per year. At Twence's CCU, where ACC is delivering a standardized Just Catch, key equipment was delivered from suppliers, and all three columns and Just Catch containers have now been installed. The plant will start capturing at the end of 2023, with a capacity of 100,000 tons of CO2 per year. The quarter saw several developments indicating a growing CCS industry. In March, the U.K. carbon capture market made big steps, confirming projects moving into final negotiations for Track 1 government funding.
ACC is the carbon capture provider for a FEED for bp's Net Zero Teesside Power, the FEED for SSE Kårstø B3, and the pre-FEED for Viridor's Runcorn CCS, all potential mega-scale carbon capture projects. Both bp and Viridor projects have advanced to final negotiations for Track 1 funding. ACC secured a mobile test unit campaign and feasibility study for Fortum in Denmark. This waste incineration plant in Nyborg specializes in the safe destruction of hazardous waste and converting it into energy. The planned capture capacity will be approximately 170,000 tons of CO2 per year. The company signed a letter of intent to deliver 2 Just Catch units for a large carbon capture project with a planned capture capacity of 200,000 tons per year. The final investment decision is expected in this second quarter.
ACC also saw several pre-FEED and study awards, including a crucial pre-FEED for a European power utility and several studies across industries such as waste energy and smelting. Related to research and development, Aker Carbon Capture demonstrated the effectiveness of its technology on flue gases from smelters through its mobile test unit campaign for CO2 Hub Nord and Elkem. The company has launched the third generation JustCatch, which includes improved energy efficiency, smaller footprint, and fewer modules. They completed an R&D project for high pressure CO2 separation using membranes. Lastly, Aker Carbon Capture extended its partnership with Carbfix to offer a full CCS value chain. The companies aim to collaborate on point source capture and storage volumes between 100,000 and 1 million tons CO₂ per year, focusing on hard-to-abate industries such as cement, gassed power, and waste energy in both Europe and North America.
Putting this all together, we see high and increased activity for Aker Carbon Capture and expect several key decisions related to opportunities for the company over the coming quarters. Moving to Aker Horizons asset development. The hydrogen portfolio has benefited from positive commercial and regulatory developments in the quarter. The projects are progressing well, with a primary focus on the Rjukan Hydrogen project and the Narvik Green Ammonia project. We achieved a milestone at the Narvik Green Ammonia project, signing offtake LOIs with large-scale European industrial companies for more than 1.5 times the production volume. This accomplishment reflects Norway's strong value proposition as a hydrogen exporting country and the attractiveness of Narvik specifically. In parallel, we are advancing negotiations to secure power necessary for this large project. We look forward to sharing more information about these developments in due course.
We continue to see regulatory tailwinds are encouraged by the EU's proposed Hydrogen Bank. The Rjukan Hydrogen project is well-positioned to participate in the initial auction, and we expect other projects in the portfolio to partake in subsequent rounds. The EU Innovation Fund is another good example of regulatory progress. The Narvik Green Ammonia project has submitted an application for significant support to this fund and expect to know the outcome by year-end. We are excited to officially introduce the Narvik Green Ammonia project, which is the first project we're moving ahead with at the green industrial hub being developed in northern Norway. We plan to develop a large-scale green ammonia production facility with an installed electrolyzer capacity of up to 600 megawatts with a planned FID in 2025.
The hydrogen and ammonia production will be located at Skoglund, close to Narvik, with access to substantial grid capacity at Kvandal, just 1 kilometer away. The produced ammonia will be transported by a tunneled pipeline down to the storage and export facility by the sea. Civil and electrical works on the site are well underway. The Narvik Green Ammonia project has achieved several milestones recently. In addition to the progress on offtake, feedstock, and government support, we have already secured a large portion of the grid capacity required, having completed a feasibility study proving the project's viability and sent an official request to Narvik Municipality to initiate the formal zoning and permitting process. We are advancing discussions with leading European energy and industrial companies to join as partners with the aim of signing joint development agreements and co-develop the project towards a final investment decision.
Rjukan is an important front runner, serving as a blueprint for our larger projects. The facility will utilize existing infrastructure and industrial land, enabling early startup due to available power at the site with a planned commercial operation date in 2025 for the first phase. We recently completed a pre-FEED for civil works and a concept study for landslide. The permitting process is underway. Partnership discussions are progressing with the intention of signing a joint development agreement by mid-year. We have also secured an LOI for a significant amount of the offtake in our dialogue with other interested parties. During the first quarter, a study was completed with other companies in Rjukan to evaluate opportunities for utilizing by-products and developing supporting infrastructure. Developing joint solutions with other stakeholders is key to extracting value from the excess heat and oxygen from the plant.
We're also making progress in the wider portfolio, fueled by a pickup of interest on offtake, driven by the necessity to decarbonize hard-to-abate industries and by government support schemes materializing. The rising acknowledgment in Europe that blue hydrogen is an important part of the future energy mix is also encouraging for our Akerra and H2 Gateway projects. With that, I'll hand it over to Mary Quaney to present the developments in Mainstream.
Thank you, Christian. Mainstream has been active in Chile since 2009, having identified the market opportunity there quite early due to its strong fundamental drivers for renewable energy development. Last year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance ranked it number one in their emerging markets ranking due to its attractiveness for clean power investments and deployment. This is an OECD country with a strong credit rating, high power demand, and the second highest GDP per capita in South America. It has one of the best solar resources in the world, and the Chilean government has been a leader in terms of its decarbonization agenda on a number of fronts, including committing to delivering net zero carbon emissions, introducing carbon taxes, as well as an ambitious phase out goal for coal.
On the next slide, we see that these strong market fundamentals have resulted in significant investment in renewables, both from domestic players as well as attracting some of the largest names in the energy sector globally. This investment has translated into an exceptional growth trajectory for the deployment of renewables from 2010 to the present day, with a compounded average annual growth rate of 6.8%. The speed of growth of renewable energy in Chile, and in particular, solar generation, has surpassed all expectations. Moving to the power market in Chile. This quite rapid transition to renewables has been, by and large, quite successful, but the Chilean power system is now under stress due to the lack of flexibility of the transmission system and the structure of the power market. There are three broad characteristics which are driving this inflexibility.
Firstly, the centralized nature of the system, which is organized as a command and control market with a centralized dispatch and without the use of an exchange. Day-ahead scheduling and intraday balancing are based on detailed schedules and costs submitted by the producers. All system services are managed directly by the system operator, with the cost socialized through system cost charges. The second aspect is the difference between free and regulated customers. Large customers who have a demand profile over a certain threshold are free to source their electricity supply directly from the generators. Smaller customers are regulators and must buy their power from their local distribution companies at regulated prices. The distribution companies group their purchases in public tenders for standardized PPAs, known as DISCO PPAs. This has been one of the main routes for independent renewable companies, such as Mainstream, to access the market.
The third aspect is the nodal power system. Hourly prices clear in more than 1,000 nodes across the country. The cost of geographical imbalances is carried by the market participants. For free customers, the nodal price risk is addressed in negotiated bilateral PPAs. For regulated customers, the standardized distribution company PPAs specify that the nodal price risk is carried by the generator. Over the course of the past decade, the company has gone from being an unknown new entrant to the largest pure-play renewable energy company in the market today. This quarter, we reached the significant milestone of having 1.1 GW of our 1.4 GW Andes Renovables platform in commercial operation, with the remaining 300 MW under construction.
In addition to this, we have an active pipeline of development assets comprising 1.2 GW of wind and 0.2 GW of solar. The map on the right shows the geographical and technology spread of our Andes Renovables portfolio. Our portfolio of assets is well-balanced, with proportionally more wind than solar assets compared to many of our peers. From a geographical perspective, our projects are located from north to south, helping mitigate system risk. On the next slide, the challenges to this high-paced green transition are more apart. The graphic on this slide illustrates the significant impact transmission system issues have had on nodal pricing between 2020 and 2022. As solar production has rapidly increased, the price received for solar production has dropped by over 70%, with prices falling to zero due to excess production during many sun hours.
During non-solar production hours, the price has been driven up significantly by fossil fuel prices, dry hydrological conditions, and the use of expensive diesel generation. The consequences of these challenges are being most acutely felt by renewable generators, who bear the greatest exposures to price and system imbalances. Solutions to these imbalances are underway in the form of battery storage, upgrades to the grid, increasing the capacity of the existing grid, as well as demand-side flexibility. These solutions are not quick to deploy, and they will take time to take effect. Moving to the next slide, 2022 was a very challenging year for the renewables sector in Chile, driven by a combination of external factors which have caused a series of shocks to the system.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused global supply chain issues, leading to delays in construction and ultimately resulting in ongoing delays to projects getting built and reaching commercial operation. Hydropower, which typically represents 30% of the country's power generation, has suffered considerable underperformance during this period, resulting in a 30% loss of production due to 7 consecutive years of below-normal rainfall. The war in Ukraine caused fuel prices to spike considerably in 2022. This is significant as coal and gas set the price during non-solar hours, as well as being the main cost driver for system costs. The graphic on the right illustrates the price increases of these factors, resulting in a massive increase in system costs, which are borne by the generators through the distribution company PPAs. This final slide outlines some of the proposals and policy engagements in the past four months.
During this period, Mainstream has been engaged in ongoing and intensive dialogue with the regulators and governments at the most senior levels, key members of the Mainstream leadership team have spent significant time in Chile engaging on these matters. In January, the regulator proposed 15 technical and regulatory measures to address the issues. A month later, Mainstream and the eight players shown in the graphic on this slide sent a letter to the Energy Minister with a proposal to modify the energy prices under a transitional measure until more enduring reform can be delivered. This letter spurred support from Chile's Renewable Association, ACERA, and opposition from an incumbent operators which has been well-publicized in the media. Most recently, last month, the Energy Minister launched 10 initiatives to accommodate what he terms the second half of the energy transition.
All stakeholders agree that changes are needed to reflect a market with high levels of renewable generation. However, the response to date has been insufficient insofar as the measures proposed do not address the immediate nature and the scale of the issues, and the renewable energy sector remains unduly exposed to the pricing volatility and increased system costs. I will now hand over to Mary.
Thank you, Ciaran. I will present Mainstream's progress during Q1 of this year, starting with the key highlights for the period. In Chile, we now have 1.1 gigawatts of fully operational wind and solar assets delivering power to the Chilean grid, with 0.3 gigawatts of this having reached commercial operation in Q1. This is a very significant milestone in the delivery of the 1.4 gigawatt Andes Renovables platform. However, severe market challenges in Chile remain, with losses increasing in Q1 versus Q4. In Aker's home market of Norway, we are actively preparing for the upcoming offshore licensing rounds after the government published the auction criteria a number of weeks ago, and we are preparing for the formal tender process in the second half of this year.
In South Africa, we have signed a corporate power purchase agreement for approximately 100 megawatts with an industrial off-taker, which is our first private sector agreement in this market. Our global pipeline now stands at 20.6 gigawatts, down slightly from the previous quarter, reflecting our annual strategic review of assets. This slight decrease has been offset in part by the addition of early-stage development projects in South Africa and in Australia. We continue our rigorous financial discipline as well as the ongoing prioritization of key projects across all of our markets as key developments take place. On to the next slide, to key portfolio updates. In Chile, as mentioned, we have reached a significant milestone in the delivery of the Andes Renovables platform, with 1.1 gigawatts now fully operational. Two further wind farms with a capacity of 300 megawatts reached commercial operations in Q1.
That gives us 8 assets of the 10 assets now in commercial operation, with the final two wind farms remaining to complete construction. As previously reported, the market conditions in Chile continue to be challenging. Mainstream is actively pursuing mitigation by addressing market inefficiencies with the regulator and government directly. With a coalition of nine pure-play renewable energy companies and through industry associations. In parallel, Mainstream has appointed a financial advisor and is in active dialogue with its lenders on the long-term capital structure for the Andes Renovables portfolio in Chile. Moving to Africa. In South Africa, we've recently signed our first corporate PPA in the market with an industrial off-taker for a project with a capacity of 100 megawatts, and we hope to provide more details on this in the coming weeks.
We see significant opportunities for growth in the corporate PPA sector in South Africa, as such, we are in active discussions with a number of potential off-takers. We continue to progress our six solar projects, which were awarded under Round 5 and are targeted to reach financial close this year. Finally, in Africa, we successfully completed the planned sale of our Pan-Africa platform, Lekela Power, to Infinity Power, a joint venture between Infinity and Masdar in March. The transaction, which is Africa's biggest renewables deal, generates net proceeds to Mainstream of approximately $90 million. In the Philippines, the late stages of development of the Réamann offshore wind project is progressing well. We target to bring into construction at the end of this year. Moving to offshore wind and starting with Norway.
At the end of March, the government officially opened the application window for the country's first and highly anticipated offshore wind auction. Our team is currently going through a period of intensive work in preparation to finalize our tenders. For the Sørlige Nordsjø II area, we are working with our partners, bp and Statkraft, to submit our pre-qualification application by early August. Qualified bidders will then participate in a CFD auction, which is expected to take place by the end of this year. For Utsira Nord, which is a floating offshore wind area, the competition model is based on qualitative criteria, and we're working with our partners, Ocean Winds and Statkraft, to submit our application by the first of September. We welcome the recent move by the authorities to consider increasing the site capacities from 500 to 750 MW.
In Sweden, we continue to progress four offshore wind projects with our partner, Hexicon, in our 50/50 Freja Offshore joint venture. Last month, we submitted a permit application for the Mareld floating wind farm located on the west coast of Sweden, near the border of Norway. This development has a capacity of up to 1.2 GW. In Mainstream's home market here in Ireland, the government has recently issued a policy statement for phase two of the country's offshore wind program, which is changing from a developer-led approach to a plan-led approach. We continue to evaluate the implications of this change in direction for our three potential developments. In South Korea, our KF Wind project is preparing to submit its draft EIA report, while in Scotland, our project, the Ardersier Offshore Wind Farm, has commenced digital aerial surveys for birds and marine mammals in April.
During this quarter, we concluded our annual strategic review of the business, part of which involved a comprehensive market review. As a result of this process, we took the decision to cease exploring early-stage opportunities in Japan and the U.S., instead, we are prioritizing our more advanced offshore projects and opportunities across Asia and the European waters. Finally, to our project pipeline on the next slide. Our global pipeline now stands at 20.6 gigawatts, which reflects a decrease of 0.9 gigawatts compared to Q4 of last year. On a year-on-year basis, our development pipeline growth reflects the additions of Scotland and our KF Wind floating offshore wind project in South Korea, which was previously part of the Aker Offshore Wind portfolio, which combined with Mainstream in 2022. The remaining increases came from early-stage development projects in South Africa and Australia.
We now have 1.1 GW in operation, an increase of 0.3 GW since the last quarter, and a further 0.3 GW in construction and in commercial operations. In addition to this, we have 10 GW+ portfolio of projects in our pre-development pipeline. These projects, including Power-to-X opportunities, continue to undergo feasibility analysis, and as they successfully come through this screening process, they will then funnel through into our development pipeline. With that, I hand you to Nanna.
Thank you, Marianne. In the quarter, net asset values were up from NOK 15.1 billion in Q4 to NOK 15.8 billion at the end of Q1. The changes relate to a positive share price development for Aker Carbon Capture in the quarter. Investments in our green projects that have increased asset values but also decreased our cash position and thus represent a net neutral in the way we record our NAV, as well as operating and interest costs. The next slide shows Aker Horizons parent and holding company's key financials for the quarter. The EBITDA was negative NOK 33 million in Q1, reflecting general overhead in Aker Horizons. The net profit was NOK 725 million, reflecting also the value increase in our listed shareholding in Aker Carbon Capture and net other financial items, mainly interest income and interest costs.
Cash flow from operating activities consists of running costs and interest paid and interest received, amounted to negative NOK 74 million in the quarter, which also represent a negative working capital effect in Q1. Investing cash flows consists of investments in our green projects in Narvik, in asset development, and in SuperNode. The net cash flow for the quarter was negative NOK 345 million. The cash balance was reduced from NOK 4.1 billion to NOK 3.8 billion. That brings us to available liquidity. The RCF of EUR 500 million was undrawn at quarter end. Post-quarter, we extended the RCF facility with the eight European banks with the first out of two one-year options, and the RCF now matures in May 2025.
With a cash position of NOK 3.8 billion, the RCF undrawn, that sums up to a total available liquidity of NOK 9.5 billion. This is slightly increased versus Q4, also due to a weakening of the Norwegian krone versus euro, which is the currency the RCF is denominated in. The net interest-bearing debt position was up from NOK 1.9 billion in Q4 to NOK 2.3 billion in Q1, reflecting operating costs, interest paid and accrued, and investments in our green projects. Summing up, Aker Horizons had gross asset values of NOK 22 billion, net interest-bearing debt of NOK 2.3 billion, and available liquidity of NOK 9.5 billion in Q1. The loan to value RCF covenant is defined as the net senior debt over the gross asset value and stood at -7% in Q1, giving a significant headroom to our covenant of 50%.
With that, we open up for Q&A.
Thank you, Nanna. Moving over to the Q&A portion of this presentation. We've received a few questions. The first one is from Benjamin Billiot from Pareto Securities, who has some questions on Chile. 3 questions are: What portion of Mainstream's NAV is accounted for by the Chilean producing assets? What would trigger a revaluation of these assets? Thirdly, are you considering an equity injection in the portfolio? I believe Paul Corrigan will be answering these questions alongside with Nanna.
Yes. Thank you, Marianne. We have defined our NAV in Aker Horizons as the market value for listed assets, the last transaction price subject to a third party, material transaction, and book values for other assets. This is in line with how the Aker group reports net asset values. For Mainstream, the NAV reported in Aker Horizons represents the transaction with Mitsui that was completed around a year ago. In Q4, Mainstream recognized an impairment to the book values in Chile of $350 million, in the Aker Horizons NAV, we adjusted the Mainstream NAV for this subsequent impairment.
When it comes to the composition of the Mainstream NAV, Chile makes up a part of it as we see it, but the Mainstream NAV is also comprised by values in the other platforms, namely offshore South Africa and APAC, as well as the cash balance at the group level. A re-evaluation of the Chilean assets would be triggered in the event of the outlook worsening over and above the level at which was impaired in Q4. Paul, over to you.
Thank you, Nana. If I could take the final question regarding any equity injection into the portfolio. As a committed owner, our focus at present is on overcoming the market challenges, working with our lenders, but also funding the completion of construction of the two remaining projects and any last work on the other eight, which will require some additional equity injections. That's our focus for present.
Thank you, Paul. We have some questions from Roald Hartvigsen from Clarksons. Asset development was rejected grid access to 1,130 megawatts worth of projects in Narvik during the quarter. How do you see this affecting your developments? Kristoffer, I'll give this to you.
Thank you. First of all, we are very fortunate to already have secured a substantial amount of grid in the Narvik area, which can support large scale development of green industry. We, however, need more to realize our ambitious industrial plans, and we are now, together with our partner Nordkraft, reapplying for more grid. Through demonstrating the maturity of our plans, we are hopefully in a good position to secure this, taking into account the revised criteria for grid awards.
Good. Two questions for Mainstream. Does the negative EUR 51 million EBITDA figure for Mainstream include the EUR 28 million gain on the Lekela sale? How do you view expected profitability on Round 5 projects in South Africa, and what is your assessment of the distressed situation in the country and the recent developments at Eskom? Mary, I will hand this one over to you.
Thank you. Starting with South Africa, with regard to the Round 5 portfolio, we don't disclose individual project returns, but we do continue to maintain our financial discipline and are focused on achieving our return hurdles in order to bring these projects through to financial close. Just by way of context, we have the benefit of scale in this regard as these are six solar projects co-located and also a significant portfolio of wind assets. With regard to the challenges in the market within the power sector, there is a very deep and severe need for power, including for renewable energy generation, given that it can be installed fastest onto the system.
In that regard, I think it's just notable to that the fact that we have just signed our first corporate PPA in the market in South Africa. Paul will take the question on EBITDA.
Thank you, Mary. Given that Lekela is a joint venture, we report on our gain on the sale below EBITDA line, and it's reflected in the net profit line. Gains on sale in Q1 of EUR 28 million are recognized. We did receive proceeds of EUR 39 million in April, and a further EUR 51 million is due to follow shortly as it just works its way through the group.
Thank you, Paul. Moving on to the next question. This one is from Jørgen Bruaset in Nordea. Regarding Chilean market headwinds, what can you say about the best case and worst case solutions for moving the portfolio forward?
Thank you. Yes, with regard to the Chilean market situation, it clearly is a very challenging market environment at the moment. However, we do expect the situation to improve, but this will take some time. We are actively pursuing mitigation with regard to addressing the market inefficiencies with the regulator and with the government directly, and I do expect some improvements in that regard. In the meantime, clearly the engagement with our lenders on the long-term capital structure for the portfolio in Chile is a very important factor. What is worth noting, just in terms of overall context, that the assets that are particularly suffering at the moment across the renewable energy sector in Chile are the solar assets, particularly in the north of Chile.
The Mainstream portfolio does benefit from having very strong wind assets as well as a very strong wind pipeline of development assets located in the south of Chile, which is a very valuable pipeline and a very important mitigant in terms of the current market challenges.
Thank you, Mary. With that, those are the questions that we had for today. If you have any follow-up questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our Head of Investor Relations, Christian Yggeseth. Otherwise, we look forward to seeing you again on July thirteenth for our Q2 2023 results. Thank you.