on renewable energy. If successful, we will integrate these operations and look to utilizing this business to expand in the future. 

We also added to our existing hydroelectric and wind operations in New England, California and British Columbia by acquiring approximately 700 megawatts of generating facilities. In addition, we completed construction of three hydroelectric projects with nearly 100 megawatts of capacity. 

Subsequent to the end of the year, we announced plans to acquire one third of a 417 megawatt hydroelectric plant in Pennsylvania, one of the largest hydro facilities in the northeastern U.S. Looking ahead, our pipeline of organic developments should add 1,700 megawatts of generating capacity to our portfolio. 

## Brookfield Infrastructure Group 

Organic growth initiatives and acquisitions over the past three years are now contributing to excellent performance from our infrastructure group, with FFO rising 111% in 2013 to $472 million. We increased the scale of this business over the last year and are well positioned for future growth with a widely-held public entity and our follow-on flagship $7 billion private fund. 

Our infrastructure group announced plans to acquire a number of assets in the fourth quarter, including a 27% stake in a rail and ports business in Brazil for approximately $850 million. This partnership with Vale should lead to other investment opportunities in the future. We also recently committed to acquire ports in Los Angeles and Oakland, partnering with a major shipping company that wanted to raise capital. Earlier in the year, we increased our stake in a network of South American toll roads with a $700 million investment and added to our district energy businesses with acquisitions in Houston and New Orleans. 

Organic growth initiatives during the year included commissioning our Texas electrical transmission network. The merger of our UK utility business with its largest competitor was also completed early in the year, and after refinancing this asset, we increased FFO by more than 70%. 

The expansion of our infrastructure portfolio was funded in part by recycling capital from mature assets, newly issued shares in Brookfield Infrastructure, and institutional clients. We sold Canadian and U.S. timber investments for $3 billion and a minority ownership in a New Zealand utility for proceeds of $410 million. 

## Brookfield Private Equity Group 

We often spend many years improving investee businesses and investing capital before reaping the rewards of our efforts. Last year, we harvested the results of many years of hard work on a number of companies involved in the U.S. homebuilding business. This resulted in FFO increasing by 152%, year over year, to $658 million. 

Realizations over last year included the sale of a U.S. paper and packaging business to a strategic buyer for $1 billion. We also agreed to sell our stake in a major oriented strand board producer to a competitor in a cash and stock deal that generated $250 million in cash and gives us continued exposure to improving housing markets though a meaningful equity position in North America’s largest OSB producer. We sold an additional $265 million of shares in forest product companies and continue to hold a significant position in these businesses. Our North American residential property development operations also achieved excellent results with land values increasing across virtually every market and home sales velocity increasing. 

We made a number of promising investments in the energy business in 2013, where we believe relatively low natural gas prices had led to attractive valuations. This has resulted in us building one of North America’s largest coal bed methane businesses, adding significant scale in 2013 with a $215 million acquisition. We also privatized two junior oil and gas companies and merged their operating platforms. 

We invested in a cold storage business with facilities in Toronto and Calgary that we believe can be developed into a significant national company. And as part of our strategy to assist commodity companies which have lost access to public market financing, we made a $170 million loan to a palladium mining company that needed capital to complete an expansion project. 

