Last December, the One Planet Summit was held in Paris, an international meeting during which the financing of actions in favour of new energies played a central role. Indeed, many entrepreneurial initiatives are developing in the ecological and renewable energy sector. The latter are now an essential component of energy supply, mainly due to the development of hydroelectricity, wind and solar energy.
Nevertheless, such steps require a significant volume of investment. This article is intended to shed light on this subject at the heart of current debates.
What are the new energies?
Also called renewable energies, the new energies are not new but are increasingly being used in the energy transition. They are energy sources whose natural renewal is fast enough that they can be considered as inexhaustible resources: their quantity does not decrease despite consumption. These include hydro, solar and wind power.
And their financing?
1. Consulting firms
Many consulting firms specialised in the energy and environment sectors exist to accompany you. Finergreen is a consulting firm specialising in fundraising in the new energy sector. It is involved in financing, refinancing, capital raising and bond raising operations. The consulting firm Zelya Energy intervenes from strategy to complete audits and due diligence of companies and assets in the energy sector.
2. Agency assistance
The promotion of renewable energy sources is financially supported by the European Investment Bank (EIB). The latter applies selection criteria and concentrates its financial participation on 4 branches: sustainability, competitiveness in this sector, technologies and security of energy supply.
ADEME, the Environment and Energy Management Agency, is a public institution that promotes actions in the fields of the environment, energy and sustainable development. In addition to making its expertise available, the agency also helps finance the project to support the company in its environmental approach. However, this aid does not concern all projects, selection criteria must be taken into account. To pursue their responsible approach, companies must think about their electricity subscription so that it corresponds as closely as possible to their consumption.
3. Green bonds
A green bond is a debt security issued on the market by a company or public entity to finance environment-related projects in the context of an energy transition – development of renewable energies, development of the low-consumption transport network, improvement of energy efficiency, etc. The green bond market is on the rise. By buying these bonds, investors lend money to the company, which repays them with interest after a certain period.
4. Lending platforms
Online lending platforms appear as a complementary financing solution to traditional players. The energy transition and especially renewable energies lend themselves to this model because they are attractive and engaging subjects for savers wishing to give meaning to their investments today.
Their model is simple: they allow SMEs to borrow directly from private and professional lenders. Financing is very often much faster and more flexible than traditional financing. Moreover, these platforms emphasise a dematerialised and ultra-simple borrowing process because as its name indicates, everything happens online.
They financed renewable energies on the Lendix lending platform.
Amadeite, a subsidiary of the Olmix Group, is dedicated to the preparation and production of natural additives for nutrition, animal hygiene and plant nutrition.
To implement its global project “HealthSea foodTech”, Amadéite structured a global financial engineering with a financing of more than 70 million euros. In this context, the group borrowed €1,040,000 from Lendix to finance a new production line for breaded products made from turkeys raised without antibiotics thanks to algae.
More than 1500 lenders participated in the project, which was financed in less than a week on the platform.