The IDAE renews its investment plan for energy transition projects with an initial allocation of €100 million and launches an invitation for innovative proposals

Prototype of marine energy collector

IDAE, which if part of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), is activating an allocation of €100 million from the General State Budget and the Recovery Plan (PRTR) to invest as a minority partner in emerging business projects involving innovative technological solutions, start-ups and useful business models within the global process of decarbonisation of the Spanish economy. To this end, it has launched a non-binding invitation to identify the most promising initiatives in strategic areas of the energy transition to facilitate their commercial activation and consolidation.

This announcement was made by Teresa Ribera, Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge in Brussels: "Today we are opening for public information an Expression of Interest on the IDAE's main strategic investment axes. We have €100 million for the IDAE to become a shareholder in new vectors and new energy solutions. As a public company, it has always had the vocation to be a shareholder and a promoter of groundbreaking undertakings of the highest order, and we think there is a lot of wealth and entrepreneurship that we want to bring to light: new technologies, new services".

DIRECT PARTICIPATION AS A MATTER OF PRIORITY

Thanks to this financial endowment, the Institute will be able to acquire equity stakes in companies, start-ups, SPVs and newly created companies involved in cutting-edge projects in sustainable mobility, renewable technologies, hydrogen, infrastructures, storage and flexibility of the electricity system, efficiency, industrial value chain and circular economy, as priority areas. Exceptionally, the IDAE may also value other instruments such as loans or equity loans.

The IDAE's participation in the share capital of the selected projects will always be a minority shareholding of somewhere around 5% and 20% and up to €10 million per project. Technically feasible and economically profitable proposals will be sought for investments to be made under market conditions. The criteria the IDAE will consider when analysing these proposals and assessing the investment where appropriate, can be consulted on the website Investment Strategy.

All interested parties can now send their projects for consideration to the following specific IDAE mailbox: inversiones@idae.es.

MOBILISING PRIVATE INVESTMENT

The IDAE's Investment Strategy 2024-2026 seeks to consolidate the IDAE's investment role, in line with the IDAE's Strategic Energy and Climate Framework. In its update, the PNIEC underlines the need to accompany the business and industry sector in the transformation of the energy model with instruments that allow private investment to be mobilised, consolidating business models and showing the economic opportunities offered by the transition, so that they can be taken up by the market when public participation is not necessary.

In this context, public-private co-investment mechanisms are necessary to complement the granting of aid to achieve this investment mobilisation and contribute to the consolidation of the industrial and business fabric throughout the value chain.

The detailed study of the needs of private agents, channelling and access to additional sources of financing and participation through minority positions in companies, etc. are all necessary public actions, especially in emerging branches of activity with companies and technologies that are not very consolidated, where the risk - or the perception of this risk - does not make them attractive for private investment in the absence of this accompanying framework.

PIONEER IN RENEWABLE INVESTMENTS

As a public business entity, the IDAE has been investing in pioneering renewable technology projects since the 1980s, contributing to accelerating their maturity, scalability and commercial viability. In particular, the Institute has played a leading role in both the development of wind energy in the country with equity stakes in some of the first wind farms, and in the rehabilitation and construction of mini-hydro plants, cogeneration plants and photovoltaic deployment.

It currently participates in 25 companies under different public-private partnership formulas or together with other public entities. In addition to traditional projects, in the last two decades it has incorporated other more evolved profiles, such as demand management and microfinance start-ups for innovative projects in the energy transition, renewable hydrogen projects and R&D&I developments such as the marine energy testing platform.

Non official translation