Post by Kaspar Klemm

Yesterday I posted about “Europe 2031”, an scenario published a couple of days ago about the development Europe will take if we don’t invest into AI now. We will become ever more dependent on the US and China and will always be behind the AI frontier, with potentially devastating consequences. One key part of the solution is massive investments in energy and storage to create the energy abundance needed for AI. To that end, let’s take a look at what happended in Germany in the last ~6 weeks. The deals that actually crossed the line: 🔋 Announced today, ECO STOR (owned by Nature Infrastructure Capital and Brookfield's X-ELIO) reached debt close on the 300 MW / 700 MWh Förderstedt project in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany's largest battery, with Santander and NORD/LB financing the roughly €250m build. EcoStor previously signed a five-year tolling agreement with Next Kraftwerke. 🔋 Aquila Capital reached financial close on Project Wetzen, a 56 MW / 112 MWh standalone battery in Lower Saxony, with €26m of debt from ING and Entrix as optimiser. Aquila called it one of the first fully merchant BESS financings in Germany of that size, the first of a 14-project pipeline. 🔋 Second Foundation acquired a five-project 56 MW / 180 MWh BESS portfolio from Chint Solar Europeon a forward-COD basis, with Chint staying on as EPC and O&M. 🌪️ Encavis acquired the 80 MW Vietlübbe onshore wind farm from developer UKA – Der Energieparkentwickler ☀️ PARQ energy GmbH energy acquired a 56.6 MWp solar park in Brandenburg, seller undisclosed. ☀️🔋 SUNCATCHER Gruppe signed Statkraft to a route-to-market deal running to 2031 across three co-located solar-plus-storage parks: 34.5 MWp of PV with 12 MW / 24 MWh of batteries. Next to the deals, a lot of the news was groundbreakings and project progress rather than transactions: 🔹 Kyon Energy broke ground on three BESS, in NRW, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein, totalling 273 MW / 552 MWh. 🔹 green flexibility energised a 40 MW / 80 MWh battery in Bavaria. 🔹 Chint Solar Europe started building its first German battery (12 MW / 40 MWh) 🔹Return broke ground on a 13 MW / 29 MWh BESS in NRW. 🔹 terralayr energised another 20MW/40MWh BESS in NRW. Three observations: 1️⃣ In general, fewer big new M&A or financing deals announced. In April, there were some big deals (Blackstone and European Energy, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Ørsted, Allianz with Gesi), in the last 6 weeks we had one big deal with the Förderstedt financing (but granted, that is really a big one!) 2️⃣ I think the last 6 weeks were a good reminder of how wide the market is. Still some big players involved, but also numerous midsized and smaller companies being very active. 3️⃣ Battery storage dominates the news. The 27 May grid-fee clarity, confirming the August 2029 exemption, likely locked that in for the coming months. Expect a big wave of batteries to hit the market. What did I miss? Let me know if I left out a deal that belongs here.