VentureBeat

Spanish utility and renewable heavyweight Iberdrola has revealed that it will invest a hefty $8 billion in the American cleantech sector over the next 3 years. Though it plans on focusing most of its investment activities in the U.S.’s burgeoning wind sector, it also hopes to gain a foothold in the country’s other clean energy markets.

Iberdrola chairman Ignacio Sanchez Galan said he considers the U.S., with its growing interest in renewable energy and ideally flat terrain, the most promising market for wind power; he hopes to claim a 15% market share by 2010. The privately-held firm, the world’s biggest wind developer, owns farms in New York, California and Oregon with an aggregate installed capacity of 2,400 megawatts. It already has several projects underway in the Plains and Great Lakes states and expects to reach an installed capacity of 3,600 MW by year’s end.

This massive push is the latest in a series of high-profile investments — mostly led by major venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins and Israel Cleantech Ventures. According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report, VC firms invested over $2.2 billion in the cleantech sector last year.

Iberdrola’s ambitious move will likely ratchet up the competition in the wind market, which has seen a string of big deals in recent months, and could help spur domestic investment in startups like TechnoSpin, Marquiss Wind Power and Noble Environmental Power.