Irish solar and storage developer Elgin has secured up to £500 million (€584 million) in bank funding to expand its UK portfolio, a financing package that signals sustained lender appetite for utility-scale renewables debt even as UK subsidy allocation rounds grow more competitive. The funding comes from a syndicate including BNP Paribas, Siemens, Société Générale, Standard Chartered and NatWest, and will support build-out of 1,000 megawatts of UK solar and storage capacity.

Elgin is a Dublin-headquartered solar and storage developer operating across Ireland, Britain, Germany and Italy, with a pipeline of up to 10,000 megawatts and 140 employees. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners took a majority shareholding in the company in 2024.

Erova Energy Group is a Dublin-based renewable asset optimisation company providing power purchase agreements, route-to-market and trading services, and has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Macquarie Group since 2025.

Chief executive Dermot Kelleher said moving from developing projects to owning and running them could only be taken with the backing of investors, lenders and partners.

The financing marks a shift in Elgin's business model, from developing and selling projects to owning and operating them long-term, a strategy that demands materially more capital and lender confidence than a pure development pipeline. That shift tracks Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners' broader approach since taking its majority stake in 2024: building platforms capable of holding assets through their operating life rather than exiting at construction-ready stage.

The three UK projects secured Contracts for Difference in the government's Allocation Round 6 auction, the mechanism underpinning most new UK renewable capacity, and Erova's role trading and balancing that output shows how central third-party route-to-market services have become as more solar reaches operation without co-located offtake deals.

For the sector, a five-bank syndicate backing a single mid-sized developer's UK build-out signals that debt financing conditions for utility-scale solar and storage remain favourable despite growing competition for CfD allocation, a signal other developers weighing their own UK expansion will be watching closely.

Source: The Irish Times / Energy Global