Top takeaways from inspiratia’s Financing European Renewables event

9 June, 2023

This week [7 June 2023] inspiratia has been in Madrid meeting the market at our Financing European Renewables 2023 event. A day of panel discussions and networking revealed a market facing a unique set of challenges, but one unbowed and enthusiastic about the path ahead.

In view of a more detailed report of the event, here are our top takeaways from a series of vital discussions.

'All Eyes on PPAs' panel

Natasha Luther-Jones, Global Co-Chair, Energy & Natural Resources Sector at DLA Piper moderates the 'All Eyes on PPAs' panel alongside Dr. Mathias Bimberg, Head of Infrastructure, Prime Capital, Chris Matthews, Managing Director, Matrix Renewables and Joao Landolt, Head of PPAs for Global Customers, Iberdrola.

PPAs

There is a world out there without PPAs – but on the whole, they do still offer a route to a great return on investment. PPA negotiations are taking more time at the moment, though, especially in Spain due to cannibalisation, price shifts and regulatory uncertainty, which make PPAs perhaps less bankable than they have been in the past. A merchant route, on the other hand, does offer inflation protection.

There remains a large appetite for corporate PPAs in Spain and in other countries in Europe. However, government aspirations to improve planning permission delays and grid connection times are not being equalled with action, meaning there might not be enough renewable power to meet corporate PPA demand in the future.

The M&A Market

M&A deals are taking longer to complete at the moment, due to convoluted financial risks caused by high interest rates and more hybridised projects coming onto the market.

Overall, the market currently favours buyers over sellers and regions that were considered to be frontier markets are becoming more interesting to investors. Traditional renewables investors are looking toward the Baltics, where prices are a bit more sustained.

Financing

There remains a lot of liquidity in the market, and there is a large pipeline to finance. Banks are slightly more inclined to back merchant projects in the traditional renewables space, but they are still not entirely naturally disposed to do so yet. Debt funds are becoming more prepared to consider merchant, which represents a change.

Equity will have to play a larger role in order to get more projects built quickly. It is also going to be difficult for all the projects that are in an increasingly lengthy European pipeline to get PPAs, so developers and their backers are going to have to get more comfortable with merchant.

Storage

In five years' time, storage is going to be entirely mainstream, but it is going to need the financing to get there.

European governments could increase their support for the storage sector to give it an extra boost. However, they could also decide to go in the opposite direction and move to improve grid management, negating the need for as much storage investment.

'Sunny Days Ahead for Solar' Panel

Carlos Terre, Managing Director, Head of Business Development at Scope moderates the 'Sunny Days Ahead for Solar Panel' alongside Peer Piske, Managing Partner at Alantra Solar, Carlos Relancio at Galp Energia and, Juan Jaquete, Director of Investment at Plenium Partners.

Solar

Large governmental targets for solar capacity – and renewables targets more widely – need to be based on common sense. Monitoring market signals is the best way of deciding where to spend more money in order to ensure capacity is evenly spread, instead of slapdash target setting to make headlines.

Offshore wind

The offshore sector is developing better remote monitoring technology in order to reduce downtime on projects and in doing so is reducing technology risk overall.

Despite supply chain and technology concerns, floating wind is advancing and will have to succeed if offshore tenders in the Mediterranean are to be successful. Within the next fifteen years, expect floating to become a mainstream technology.