Energy and transition
The energy transition is shifting value: land that hosts a solar or wind farm becomes a strategic asset, grid connection becomes the bottleneck of every project, and European regulation is redrawing the rules faster than projects can be built.
A renewable energy project always runs into the same obstacles: planning permission, grid connection, local taxation specific to network infrastructure, and regulation that changes at the pace of legislation rather than that of construction sites.
We assist operators and investors throughout this cycle, from the initial authorisation through to the tax structuring of the project.
Your experience
A project that qualifies today runs into a regulatory constraint tomorrow that no one had anticipated: the rules change faster than the site progresses. A solar or wind farm remains blocked for lack of secure planning permission, or is suspended by a third-party challenge from someone who has nothing to lose by waiting.
And while the project waits, local taxes (IFER, property tax (taxe foncière), territorial economic contribution) keep running, poorly anticipated, until they erode a return that no one recalculated in time.
Our expertise
We anticipate European regulatory developments before they become constraints, because waiting for the legislation before reacting already means losing a project.
We secure planning permissions, defend the project before the administrative courts if a third party opposes it, and structure the infrastructure’s taxation from the design stage.
We structure project finance (debt secured solely on the assets, security granted to lenders) without exposing the sponsor’s balance sheet, and we anticipate decommissioning obligations at the end of the installation’s life, which are all too often costed after the fact. In energy storage and offshore wind, where regulation is being built as it goes, we take part in public consultations to influence the rules before they are imposed.
Energy is becoming the variable that decides whether an industrial or digital project exists at all. Firm capacity, grid connection and flexibility will be the three scarce resources that manufacturers, computing operators and lenders compete for over twenty years of contracts; the most strategic subject of the decade, and the least visible.
