inspiratia’s Investing in the Energy Transition Panel: a deep dive with Enfinity Global

9 October, 2025

This year's Investing in the Energy Transition event kicked off with a panel by the same name, bringing together leading experts across project finance, development, risk management, and legal advisory.

The panel was moderated by Pierpaolo Mastromarini, Partner at Bird and Bird.

Panelists included:

Amadeu Anguela - Enfinity Global | Head of Institutional Capital for Europe
Giulia Bartolini - ING | Managing Director, Head of Energy, Italy
Jesus de Pablo - FRV | Head of Structured Finance and M&A
Keith Paterson - CIBC | Director, Corporate Banking Europe
Rafa Sanchez - PMC Treasury | Head of Risk Management Iberia
Arturo Sferruzza - Norton Rose Fulbright | Partner

Innovation in Financing Structures: Financing Layers and Multi-asset Portfolios

Kicking off, Pierpaolo asked ING's Giulia Bartolini for her thoughts on the changing nature of financing structures for renewables. What shape is innovation taking in this space, and how quickly is change occurring?

Bartolini pointed out that – in Italy as elsewhere – sponsors and developers are increasingly looking to combine multiple asset classes within single portfolios, and that these more complex combinations are requiring more flexible financing models as a result. While not so noticeable day-by-day, when viewed over a six-month period, the change has been significant.

Yet, while innovation in financing is accelerating, Bartolini stressed that new approaches must balance flexibility and simplicity, with a diligent focus on client needs as a guiding principle. Moreover, she emphasised that, more than ever, successful financing depends on aligning the risk appetites and needs of both clients and lenders, while also optimising models to deliver target IRRs for the lenders themselves.

Broadening the discussion, Arturo Sferruzza of Norton Rose Fulbright, noted he has increasingly seen portfolio and mezzanine financing structures being merged into "all-co" vehicles, with IPPs pooling assets across countries and technologies within a single platform.

The result for financing structures is a shift towards coexisting yet diverse financing layers - including senior debt, mezzanine, and equity finance – across many developers' often multi-national or multi-regional asset portfolios.

A Shift Away from Standardised Financing?

In the face of these changes, Pierpaolo put the question to Keith Paterson of CIBC: do these innovations indicate a broader move away from standardised financing structures?

Paterson pointed out that standardisation is increasingly a double-edged sword for energy transition finance.

While banks favour the efficiency and predictability that standardisation brings, transition assets represent a unique challenge, as related regulations, business models - and even technologies themselves – can vary widely across borders. The result is a shift away from uniform structures, as standard approaches fit poorly with ever-more bespoke projects and portfolios.

Paterson noted that this shift, for lenders at least, implies an acceleration towards more borrower-friendly terms when establishing financing structures. When compared to established technologies, borrowers looking to fund newer asset types have greater control over, and input in, the intricacies of their financing strategies. Consequently, weaker structures with significantly less standardisation are becoming more common.

However, Paterson also emphasised that a lack of structure stems, to a large degree, from the relatively nascent status of many renewable energy technologies. Creating standards is an iterative process; it requires a historical track record of trial and error. As such, while we may see innovation driving a shift from our established norms of standardisation for now, as the market goes through further financing – and eventually refinancing – processes for these asset types, the new status quo may shift back again.

How can Developers Minimise Risk when Pitching their Pipelines?

Naturally, non-standard structures and nascent technologies also imply greater risk for lenders. As a developer, FRV's Jesus de Pablo spoke to the importance of keeping this front of mind when pitching pipelines to prospective financiers.

Jesus argued that an incremental approach to portfolio growth – presenting single assets, rather than large, aggregated pipelines – is one way to mitigate perceived risk for lenders. By going project by project, a developer can not only provide detailed information on site requirements, prospective outputs, and overall asset quality, but can also showcase their own expertise across each stage.

This expertise lends credibility to the developer, which is essential in what is still deemed a higher-risk investment market. With successful developer-lender relationships hinging on confidence in the former, proving integration across the value chain, displaying a robust track record, and evidencing a sophisticated approach to revenue stacking are vital for developers looking to foster interest in their projects.

Scale, Markets, and the Capital Stack: How Developers can Better Appeal to Lenders

Remaining on the topic of appealing to lenders, Mastromarini turned to Amadeu Anguela of Enfinity Global to explain how commercial banks and IPPs can work more closely to strengthen cooperation.

The solution? Business scale and capital stack optimisation, with the ultimate goal of delivering reliable and competitive energy to consumers, argued Anguela.

As Amadeu made clear, compressing the cost of capital is now central to making renewables competitive, as financing can represent 30-40% of the levelised cost of energy. Anguela explained that a 1% reduction in capital costs translates to a €5/MWh levelised cost reduction - comparable to a 15% reduction in capital expenditure - which would be very difficult to achieve through equipment or operational efficiencies alone.

Scale is a core requirement to achieve these savings: large, concentrated portfolios within a single market make it easier to raise equity, attract private credit, and secure commercial bank financing. Diversification across too many countries, by contrast, adds complexity and risk. This, Anguela clarified, is why consolidating projects across different phases in one geography - especially in attractive markets such as Italy - is a strategic priority for Enfinity Global, which currently has more than 8GW under development in the country.

Amadeu also highlighted the complementarity between private credit and commercial banks. Private credit brings speed, flexibility, and earlier monetisation of the pipeline - albeit at a higher cost - while commercial banks remain the engine of long-term competitiveness, thanks to their appetite for structured project finance. Enfinity's strategy is to use both sources of capital in tandem, refinancing higher-cost capital over time while freeing liquidity for growth.

A further cornerstone of Enfinity's approach is building long-term partnerships with lenders and investors, enabling replicable financing models across multiple projects and portfolios. This reinforces execution capacity and accelerates delivery at scale.

Anguela emphasised that this approach – growing rapidly in a single market, managing offtake, maintaining a longer pipeline, emphasising scale, and relying on long-term partnerships – creates a natural alignment with commercial banks, who then provide much of Enfinity's own capital stack.

In this context, scale becomes not only a financial advantage, but also a practical requirement to bridge business strategy with capital markets in today's project financing environment.

How Can Lenders and Clients Hedge their Risks?

Returning to risk, Pierpaolo put it to Rafa Sanchez of PMC Treasury to clarify how lenders and clients alike are hedging against their exposure on renewable energy projects.

Sanchez noted that risk management, especially regarding hedging strategies, is increasingly sophisticated – and that a vital requirement is detailed, borrower-friendly documentation. This enables sponsors to hedge interest rate exposure more flexibly, especially for platform or Holdco-level refinancings, where the survivability and portability of hedges are central.

Additionally, Rafa also pointed out that sponsors with forward-looking, hedge-friendly documentation fare significantly better in negotiations and are more prepared for future refinancing rounds.

Sanchez also referenced an increased tendency for risk managers to lock in rates ahead of financial close via deal-contingent hedges: an agreement that only activates when the underlying transaction successfully closes but insulates sponsors from market swings if deals fall through.

PMC's Rafa concluded by pressing the need for advisers and sponsors to pay special attention to local market rules and documentation nuances. With the prevalence of jurisdictional quirks in the European renewables market – such as Italy's MiFi restrictions and over-hedging limits - as sources of operational complexity, it is increasingly important to have a locally-informed, situational approach to mitigating individual project and broader pipeline risks.

Key Takeaways and Outlook

In all, the panel delivered several crucial insights for attendee sponsors, lenders, and advisers operating in the energy transition finance marketplace:

Innovation across financial structures is accelerating, with flexible portfolio and mini-perm models enabling the combination of diverse technologies and asset types. Looking forward, success depends on maintaining operational simplicity while offering enough adaptability to match client-specific strategies.
While standardisation streamlines documentation and execution, energy transition assets resist uniformity due to their unique risks, regulatory regimes, and business models. Fluid, less structured financing strategies are coming into their own – for now.
Scale is paramount, as large, focused portfolios enable cost-efficient capital raising, attract competitive bank finance, and support long-term platform growth and robust partnerships.
Risk management and hedging have become vital amid increased market volatility and interest rate uncertainty. Forward-looking documentation and robust strategy implementation are key.
Sponsor-lender alignment depends on deep cooperation, transparency in contracting and asset presentation, and integration across the value chain, with constant dialogue needed to minimise risk and optimise portfolio strategies.

Overall, the panel painted a picture of dynamic change in energy transition finance. With growing complexity, the ability to scale - across financing structures, scale, risk management, and capital sources – while also retaining key flexibility and looks likely to define success in the years to come.

We at inspiratia thank our panelists for their insights and Enfinity Global for supporting this year's Financing the Energy Transition event. To hear more from Amadeu on the day, listen to our exclusive video interview below.