France-headquartered energy major TotalEnergies has divested all 170MW of its distributed solar capacity in Europe, as it plans to “refocus” its investment on utility-scale solar PV and wind.
The divestment takes the form of two deals, and includes projects in seven European countries: Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK.
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The first deal involves Ireland-headquartered renewable energy developer Amarenco, which will acquire 100% of Énergie Développement, a joint venture formerly owned by the developer and Total, which operated around 100MW of distributed solar capacity. The second involves the sale of 17 operational commercial and industrial (C&I) projects, with a combined capacity of 70MW, to distributed renewable energy developer Ampyr.
These deals come as interest in Europe’s distributed solar sector as “softened”, according to trade body SolarPower Europe. In its most recent report, the group notes that the contribution of C&I solar to Europe’s total installed solar capacity has fallen from 37% in 2023 to 32% in 2025, while utility-scale solar made up the majority of Europe’s operational capacity last year for the first time.
Last month, speakers at Solar Media’s Clean Power 2030 Summit said that challenges remain when deploying C&I projects in particular, with developers and investors experiencing a sense of “fatigue” coming from the lengthy permitting, planning and financing processes involved.
Looking ahead, SolarPower Europe said it expects residential and smaller commercial installations to “remain soft” until 2027, “as support schemes phase out, self-consumption enablers develop slowly and lower retail electricity prices reduce urgency,” suggesting that political and economic conditions in Europe at present do not encourage investment in distributed solar.
The news follows a number of TotalEnergies investments in the utility-scale solar sector, including the start of construction at a 440MW project in the Philippines earlier this year and securing a contract to build a 400MW solar PV project in Saudi Arabia last year.
While these investments are in line with TotalEnergies’ stated ambition of divesting from its distributed solar assets to facilitate deployment of utility-scale projects, the energy major has also divested from utility-scale solar projects in the last year; last September, the company solar a 1.3GW solar portfolio in the US, comprising utility-scale and distributed assets, to global investor KKR.
