Portuguese Oil Firm Becomes Major Solar Player
Portuguese oil company Galp Energia will become one of the biggest players in Europe’s booming Spanish solar market after closing a €2.2 billion ($2.4 billion) deal for the solar assets of Spanish construction firm ACS.
The deal will strengthen Galp’s position as an integrated energy player and represents a significant step toward our commitment to support a gradual transition into a lower-carbon economy,” Gomes da Silva said. Galp said it will self-finance the Spanish solar pipeline and sell completed assets as necessary to keep its total net spend between €1 billion and €1.2 billion annually.
According to data from Wood Mackenzie, Spain represents almost half of Europe’s subsidy-free solar pipeline. And it has a huge 15-gigawatt pipeline of projects planned between 2020 and 2024.
“Spain remains Europe’s hottest PV market in 2020, following more than 4 gigawatts of installations in 2019,” Tom Heggarty, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie’s energy transition practice told GTM. “There is a huge pipeline of assets in development – the key challenge for new market entrants is acquiring projects with grid connection agreements. More companies are looking to take the same approach as Galp by using M&A to enter the market – this represents the sixth announced M&A transaction in the Spanish solar PV market since the beginning of 2020,” he added.
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