BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Enviva Partners, LP (NYSE: EVA) today announced that the sole member of the Partnership’s general partner has appointed Jeffrey W. Ubben, Chairman of ValueAct and Co-Portfolio Manager of its Spring Fund, to the general partner’s board of directors.

The ValueAct Spring Fund focuses its investments on purpose-driven companies that use sustainable business models to solve global environmental and societal problems.

“Jeff and the ValueAct Spring Fund have been supportive stakeholders and great partners to me and the Enviva team since their first visit to our plants, ports, and forestry operations to learn more about Enviva’s mission to fight climate change by reducing global utilities’ lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions,” said John Keppler, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Enviva. “I am delighted that Jeff has accepted the invitation to join our board and I believe the productive relationship we have built, combined with Jeff’s unparalleled investment acumen and unwavering focus on impacting ESG outcomes through active capital management, will provide an ongoing catalyst for Enviva’s ability to continue delivering long-term value to our broad set of stakeholders.”

“I am excited to extend the partnership and track record we have built with John and the Enviva team,” said Jeff Ubben, Chairman of ValueAct. “ValueAct has been committed to consistently increasing its investment in Enviva alongside the company’s growth and durable distribution profile and we believe there is tremendous opportunity ahead. Given the world’s commitment to phasing out coal and de-carbonizing our future, there are few companies better positioned than Enviva to innovate and deliver practical solutions to the environmental challenges we face as a society and create long-term shareholder value in this space. I look forward to working alongside my fellow board members and management to support Enviva’s vital contribution to a Net Zero world.”

“Enviva has strived to set a benchmark in sustainability, and I am thrilled that we will continue to have the support of Jeff and his colleagues at the ValueAct Spring Fund given their expertise in socially-responsible investing, sustainability, and energy,” said Dr. Jennifer Jenkins, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer of Enviva. “Solving the climate crisis is one of the most urgent issues for humanity today, and — while we have made substantial progress — we also have a long way to go. I look forward to the continued good work we will do together with Jeff, providing sustainable biomass fuel and helping enable the transition to a renewable, low-carbon electricity grid around the world.”

“We especially applaud the progress by Jennifer and the Enviva team on their entire body of work from policy implementation to thought leadership,” said Eva Zlotnicka, Managing Director of the Spring Fund and Head of Stewardship at ValueAct Capital. “Core to ValueAct Spring Fund’s investment philosophy and to our board participation is engagement with portfolio companies on authentic impact metrics that are simultaneously material to the business, to investors, and to stakeholders, including the environment. Enviva has risen to this challenge and proven a business model that, among other tangible impacts, enables the conversion of coal-fired power plants to biomass, reducing lifecycle carbon emissions by more than 85 percent.”

Jeffrey W. Ubben is a Founder and the Chairman of ValueAct Capital where he is Portfolio Manager of the ValueAct Spring Fund and is a member of the firm’s Management Committee. Mr. Ubben is a director of The AES Corporation, where he is a member of the Compensation and Financial Audit Committees, of AppHarvest, and of Nikola Corporation. He is the former chairman and director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., and a former director of Catalina Marketing Corp., Gartner Group, Inc., Mentor Corporation, Misys plc, Sara Lee Corp., Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Willis Towers Watson plc, and several other public and private companies. Prior to founding ValueAct Capital in 2000, Mr. Ubben was a Managing Partner at Blum Capital Partners for more than five years. In addition, Mr. Ubben serves on the boards of Duke University, The Nature Conservancy’s NatureVest, and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, and formerly served as Chair of the National Board of the Posse Foundation for nine years. He has a B.A. from Duke University and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

About Enviva Partners, LP

Enviva Partners, LP (NYSE: EVA) is a publicly traded master limited partnership that aggregates a natural resource, wood fiber, and processes it into a transportable form, wood pellets. The Partnership sells a significant majority of its wood pellets through long-term, take-or-pay off-take contracts with creditworthy customers in the United Kingdom and Europe. The Partnership owns and operates seven plants with a combined production capacity of approximately 3.5 million metric tons of wood pellets per year in Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida. In addition, the Partnership exports wood pellets through its marine terminals at the Port of Chesapeake, Virginia and the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina and from third-party marine terminals in Mobile, Alabama and Panama City, Florida. The Partnership has agreed to the Georgia Biomass Acquisition and the Greenwood Acquisition, which would add two operating plants and production capacity of approximately 1.4 million metric tons of wood pellets per year, after the expansion of the Greenwood Plant, in Georgia and South Carolina and a third-party marine terminal in Savannah, Georgia.