Aviva Investors, the investment arm of insurance provider Aviva, and Irish renewable energy company Astatine have announced an €800 million (US$928 million) investment to roll out renewable energy generation and decarbonisation solutions for the UK and mainland Europe’s industrial sectors.
Under the programme, the companies will develop a number of assets—including PV generation projects, battery energy storage systems (BESS), electric vehicle (EV) chargers and heat pumps—targeting the power, heat and transport sectors, which the companies describe as “energy-intensive industries and hard-to-abate sectors,” across the continent.
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While the companies did not specify where these projects would be built, or how much money would be invested in solar and storage projects versus other technologies, they noted that they have a seed portfolio of 128MW of electricity generation assets. They expect these projects to reach commercial operation within the next two years, and have a further 500MW of “pipeline opportunities”.
“These energy sources are economical, resilient to fluctuating prices suffered by traditional energy sources and can help whole sectors manage their energy transition journey in a cost-effective way,” explained Angenika Kunne, head of infrastructure equity at Aviva Investors. “This is a key component for companies looking to cut energy costs and improve economic competitiveness.”
The investment comes as industrial solar deployments in Europe grow at pace. According to the latest annual report from trade body SolarPower Europe, installations of industrial rooftop systems increased by 14% between 2023 and 2024, driving a single percentage point increase in the contribution of commercial and industrial (C&I) solar to Europe’s solar market to 37%.
The report expects “a continued slow growth” in the coming years, and references slowdowns in both the commercial and residential rooftop sectors which drove a shrinking of the European rooftop market from 40.4GW in 2023 to 36.4GW in 2024. As a result, the industrial solar sector may be uniquely positioned to limit some of these slowdowns in distributed rooftop solar.
