In January 2021, Chinese solar power company with US based headquarters ReneSola Ltd or ReneSola Power announced asset manager Eiffel Investment Group as a joint venture (JV) partner to co-develop up to 1 GW solar power capacity in Europe (see Yet Another European Joint Venture For ReneSola).
Now the 2 partners have officially sealed the JV agreement, formally naming the new entity as European Solar Energy Development JV. ReneSola has a 51% stake in the JV and Eiffel Investment holds 49%.
European Solar Energy Development will initially work on 340 MW advanced stage development projects in the geographies of Poland, Spain and France, enabling their development to ready-to-build stage. Over the next 3 years, it plans to fund the development of up to 700 MW solar projects across Europe.
Through this JV, ReneSola aims to accelerate the development and financing of its current and future solar projects across the continent which is a major focus market for the Chinese company. In November 2020, it entered a joint venture with investor Innova to co-develop more than 100 MW capacity in the UK (see ReneSola Announces Another PV Joint Venture In UK).
On the JV agreement with Eiffel Investment, ReneSola's CEO Yumin Liu said it is aligned with the company's growth strategy, and will enable it to further expand its project development activities across Europe. By the end of 2021, ReneSola aims to build a 2 GW project pipeline in the core markets of US and Europe and sell close to 300 projects (see ReneSola's 2020 Annual Revenues Dropped 38%).
In Poland, Eiffel Investment Group recently announced a €35 million bridge facility for GoldenPeaks Capital to support the early construction works of Alpha and Charlie solar projects with a total capacity of between 150 MW to 200 MW, and the facility will then be recycled into other projects. Eiffel Investment will also allocate some proceeds of its 2 funds to support GoldenPeaks' Hungarian portfolio with the 1st projects of the latter expecting to enter the national auctions in 2021.