Greenvolt: €159M secured for energy storage projects

Greenvolt Power Group is a global renewable energy producer operating in more than 17 countries. The company specializes in wind, solar and energy storage projects on an industrial scale.

The management team has over 18 years of experience in the implementation of energy projects in Europe and the USA. The total capacity of projects in the group’s portfolio is approx. 9.3 GW, of which a significant part has already reached the status of readiness for construction or has been commissioned.

In Poland, investments are carried out through dedicated special purpose vehicles owned by Greenvolt Power Group Sp. z o.o.

The aim of the cooperation was to obtain funding for four large-scale energy storage projects in various locations in Poland (Turość Kościelna, Kamionka, Mieczysławów, Ełk).

The projects applied in two separate, very competitive instruments:

• Modernization Fund (FM), which is financed from EU ETS revenues – three projects
• Recovery and resilience facility for Poland (KPO; G1.1.: Energy storage systems) – one project

The main challenges included:

• Very large scale of investments
• The need to prepare advanced financial models and full financial assembly, meeting the strict requirements of the institution
• Very high competition in the Modernization Fund, where a significant part of projects were rejected due to formal deficiencies or insufficient cost efficiency
• A high threshold for entry into the KPO, limiting the number of entities capable of applying – in the end, only two projects received funding
• Parallel running of application processes in different programs with different requirements and evaluation logic

Civitta team provided comprehensive support for all four projects:

• Development of an application strategy tailored to two different sources of financing
• Advice on the structure of financing large-scale projects, including the preparation of documents confirming its security
• Preparation of complete applications for funding with attachments, including: feasibility studies, financial models, cost-effectiveness analyses, methodology for calculating ecological effects, optimization of project parameters in terms of point criteria, support in adapting documentation to various formal and substantive requirements of FM and KPO, coordinating the application process for four special purpose vehicles at the same time

The key elements of our support were ensuring the completeness and reliability of financial documents, designing the project to maximise evaluation scores, and managing a successful application through an extremely selective NAP assessment process.

Funding was obtained for all four projects
Total amount of funding obtained: over €159.30 million

1. Modernization Fund (3 projects):

• Turość Kościelna: Cost €115.3 million | Grant €44 million
• Kamionka: Cost €70.7 million | Grant €23.8 million
• Mieczysławów: Cost €120.9 million | Grant €41.7 million

2. KPO (1 project):

• Ełk: Cost €142.49 million | Subsidy €49.67 million

Technical parameters:
– 200 MW / 1052 MWh
– 100 MW / 430 MWh
– 200 MW / 840 MWh
– 200 MW / 1051.5 MWh

Ecological effect: reduction of CO₂ emissions: from approx. 37 thousand to over 90 thousand Mg/year per project

Implementation of the investment:

• Increase the flexibility of the national power system
• It will enable better integration of large volumes of energy with RES
• It will strengthen Polish’s energy security

A particularly important result was obtaining funding for the project in Ełk under the KPO – in a competition in which only two entities signed the agreements.

1. In large-scale projects, comprehensive financial preparation is crucial – the lack of full financial assembly eliminates projects at an early stage.

2. Cost-effectiveness and technical parameters determine success in rankings – they require a close integration of technical and financial analysis.

3. Different sources of financing (FM vs KPO) require different application strategies, despite a similar scope of investment.

4. In the most competitive programs, success depends on matching the design with the criteria down to the smallest detail.

5. Effective management of multiple projects at the same time allows to achieve economies of scale and significant investment impact.