‘Narrowing of the spread’ in European solar as cost of capital changes

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SFIEU 2025 panel.
“The smart money is being able to adapt to uncertainty [and] operate in a world with uncertainty,” said Bart White, far right. Image: PV Tech.

The gap between the largest and smallest markets in the European renewable energy sector have narrowed in recent years, meaning investors need to base investment decisions on individual markets, rather than regional profiles.

This was a key conclusion from a panel at Solar Media’s Solar Finance & Investment Europe event, held this morning in London. With the changes in the cost of capital in different countries, Giovanni Terranova, a managing partner at Bluefield Partners, said that there were two key trends affecting this in European solar. One is relations between the UK and EU, and the other is a narrowing between the continent’s “north” and “south”, which could have a broader impact.

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“There is a narrowing of the spread between north and south,” said Terranova. “Spain and Germany have a difference [in cost of capital] of less than 1%, so the overall cost of capital and the risk of the countries is narrowing.”

Figures from S&P Global Commodity Insights suggest that, between 2023 and 2025, Europe’s annual solar installations are likely to double, with many new projects set to come online in countries that have not typically dominated the European solar sector, such as Eastern Europe.

“There is a second dimension, which is regulations, which makes an investment more attractive or less attractive,” added Terranova. “In this picture, the UK has a gap of 1-2% in terms of cost of capital, but has an advantage in the Contracts for Difference (CfDs), which [help] reduce the cost of capital, which makes it an attractive country.”

More cannibalisation, more risk appetite

This narrowing of the gap is particularly apparent in cannibalization trends. Lisa McDermott, a managing director of project finance at ABN AMRO Bank N.V., pointed out that this is most impactful in more mature markets, such as Spain and Germany.

“Cannibalisation is really coming home to roost in countries like Spain and Germany,” said McDermott. “In Europe alone, last year, we had 10,000 negative hours for power, [which is] impacting merchant revenues and power purchase agreements (PPAs).”

“We’re having to think about what kind of business cases we’re financing [and] becoming a bit more sophisticated about which combination of technologies we come to and what financing structures we use,” echoing a call for more diverse asset portfolios made at an earlier panel on the same day.

In addition to more sophisticated financing structures, Bart White, managing director and European head of energy structured finance at Santander, suggested that investors would benefit from recalibrating their appetite for risk in a sector that has seen its fair share of economic disruption in recent months.

“We had to give customers what they wanted, and that’s a really high risk product,” said White, echoing a conversation held with PV Tech prior to the summit. “Almost since the conflict in Ukraine, where there was an increase in inflection rates [and] the focus was ‘at some point there’ll be less volatility’.”

“There was optimism last year that we were coming into that model, but now we’ve got a new administration in the US, we’ve got tariffs [which] lead to changes in growth expectations, which lead to changes in interest rates,” White continued. “The smart money is being able to adapt to uncertainty [and] operate in a world with uncertainty.”

Solar Media is hosting its annual Solar Finance & Investment Europe event in London on 4 – 5 February 2025. This event annually attracts infrastructure funds, institutional investors, asset managers, banks and development platforms at the forefront of European renewables; the vast majority of which are responsible for billions in active and prospective investments in the Europe’s energy transition. For more details, visit the website.

25 November 2025
Warsaw, Poland
Large Scale Solar Central and Eastern Europe continues to be the place to leverage a network that has been made over more than 10 years, to build critical partnerships to develop solar projects throughout the region.
2 December 2025
Málaga, Spain
Understanding PV module supply to the European market in 2026. PV ModuleTech Europe 2025 is a two-day conference that tackles these challenges directly, with an agenda that addresses all aspects of module supplier selection; product availability, technology offerings, traceability of supply-chain, factory auditing, module testing and reliability, and company bankability.
3 February 2026
London, UK
Returning in 2026 for its 13th edition, Solar Finance & Investment Europe Summit will bring together the brightest minds representing funds, banks, developers, utilities, government and industry across Europe and the UK on a programme that is solutions-focused from top to tail. The event is designed to enable leaders at the forefront of solar investment and deployment in Europe to scale, learn and land themselves industry defining partnerships.
10 March 2026
Frankfurt, Germany
The conference will gather the key stakeholders from PV manufacturing, equipment/materials, policy-making and strategy, capital equipment investment and all interested downstream channels and third-party entities. The goal is simple: to map out PV manufacturing out to 2030 and beyond.

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