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Private capital is reshaping South-East Europe’s power grid—by changing who owns risk and how projects get financed
In South-East Europe, the next phase of the power transition is being decided less by construction schedules than by financing design. As private capital moves into generation and storage alongside transmission-adjacent investments, the region’s ownership map is evolving—and with it, the types of projects that can reach bankability quickly enough to capture market opportunities.
That change matters because the regional power market is no longer operating as a simple build-and-sell environment. It is becoming an investable infrastructure system in which returns depend on who can fund congestion relief, hybridisation and route-to-market structures at speed. The EIB Group said it invested €822 million in the Western Balkans in 2025, mobilising about €1.5 billion of new investment. Separately, the EBRD reported record annual investment of €955 million in Romania in 2025, with 81% directed to the green economy.
The capital stack becomes the real competitive advantage
The financial scale required for South-East Europe helps explain why capital structure has moved to the centre of investor decision-making. Transmission upgrades still imply a pipeline in the multi-billion-euro range through 2030, while renewable and storage additions require several times that amount again. In this setting, multilateral institutions are acting as early risk-absorbers and crowd-in partners for private investors rather than serving as sole funders.
The EBRD’s 2025–2030 Strategic and Capital Framework explicitly states that it will leverage public-sector and institutional interventions to mobilise private-sector capital and address project implementation risks across sectors including energy and telecoms. The underlying logic is straightforward: although South-East Europe can offer double-digit equity cases in renewables and storage, many projects remain too complex or too exposed to merchant volatility to clear on private capital alone without some form of front-end risk compression.
Romania shows how risk segmentation changes what gets built
If there is a clear test case for this model, it is Romania—where financing terms increasingly reflect how investors want to separate contracted cash flows from merchant exposure. In February 2026, the EBRD announced €34 million of financing for solar projects structured into two tranches: up to €28 million for a 61.9 MW merchant-exposed plant, and up to €6 million for a 127.8 MW plant supported by a 15-year CfD.
The merchant tranche was backed by a first-loss guarantee from the EU under InvestEU. The EIB also said its financing formed part of a broader €121 million package supporting three solar parks in Oltenia.
The point extends beyond total funding volumes. Private capital appears willing to finance Romanian solar even when merchant exposure exists—but it increasingly wants risk segmented: contracted versus merchant, guaranteed versus unguaranteed, grid-ready versus grid-dependent. That approach reflects an infrastructure market maturing into distinct layers rather than one undifferentiated development story.
A platform mindset spreads from debt into ownership
This same Romanian market is also drawing strategic developers rather than relying only on public-backed debt structures. Financing discussed late 2025 for Nofar Energy’s Romanian solar projects was framed around scaling investment in a country targeting more than 10 GW of renewable capacity by . At the same time, MET Group continued expanding its Romanian platform.
The company’s original entry involved a 52 MWp photovoltaic acquisition near Bucharest with expected output around 82 GWh per year (as stated). By 2025 company-linked reporting showed MET was also assessing onshore wind opportunities, with Romania forming part of a portfolio including solar and storage assets.
Taken together—merchant-ready solar exposure alongside strategic developer entry plus multilateral-backed debt—the pattern suggests Romania is shifting from frontier status toward platform economics where successive pools of capital can build on each other over time.
Maturity looks different in Greece—and consolidation does more than greenfield risk-taking
Banks are not the only channel through which private money arrives. In Greece, reporting indicates that private capital has been entering primarily via platform consolidation and scale acquisitions rather than mainly through early-stage greenfield risk.
A key example cited in January 2026 coverage was Masdar’s acquisition of . That deal created what was described as a Balkan gateway now used for broader regional expansion: Masdar was scanning new acquisitions in Greece and the Balkans through the Terna platform, while its corporate material states its global project portfolio capacity reached more than .
The implication drawn from this positioning is that Masdar behaves like a long-duration platform owner seeking operating or near-ready assets across interconnected markets—where scale can be monetised through storage deployment, route-to-market optimisation and eventually cross-border off-take structures.
Sovereign-aligned strategy pushes into Montenegro’s export optionality playbook
A particularly revealing case comes from Montenegro, where sector reporting described movement toward joint venture plans involving Masdar and EPCG aimed at large-scale renewable development. The ambition stated was to serve domestic demand while enabling exports to wider parts of the Balkans using existing Italy subsea connectivity—and possible future expansion.
This proposition differs from standard standalone wind or solar park models because it effectively builds an Adriatic infrastructure node around sovereign alignment, export optionality and transmission leverage—moving Montenegro closer to an export-oriented hub rather than remaining purely peripheral within regional grids.
Toward corridor finance: traders become owners as systems matter more than plants
This shift helps explain why private capital starts behaving less like traditional project finance focused on single-asset economics—and more like corridor finance focused on access to an entire system: interconnectors, balancing markets, curtailment zones and industrial demand nodes.
The growing importance of traders as owners fits this logic. MET Group remains highlighted as an example of trader-linked capital expanding from trading activity into owned generating exposure—linked back to its long-standing development in Serbia with NIS around a wind park in Plandište sized at about . Once control extends across generation plus storage plus route-to-market capabilities within the region, revenue profiles can change beyond pure merchant exposure toward blended physical output plus congestion insight and optimisation income.
A Serbian signal: hybrid assets become “financeable,” not just desirable
The next phase described for Serbia centres on whether hybrid projects can be underwritten at scale by institutional lenders. Early 2026 coverage pointed not to a conventional utility tender but instead referenced EBRD due diligence and structured financing discussions around Fortis Energy’s Sremska Mitrovica solar-plus-BESS project.
The significance lies in what it suggests about asset eligibility: Serbia appears positioned to become financeable for PV-plus-storage rather than only standalone renewables. Storage is presented as crucial because it strengthens weak merchant solar cash flows inside congested systems—turning them into infrastructure-style streams supported by optimisation value.
The article also links this transition directly to return expectations mentioned for equity IRR ranges: weaker solar cases were described roughly at about <STRONG7–9%, moving toward about <STRONG11–15%. At that point, availability of institutional debt becomes decisive for whether deals close efficiently enough for sponsors’ timelines.
Selectivity rises: investors cluster around four investable structures
This migration follows where risks can be segmented cleanly enough for investors’ mandates. Private capital increasingly seeks one (or more) of four structures:
- {}– regulated or quasi-regulated transmission/substation exposure with lower returns but higher predictability;
- – contracted renewables backed by investment-grade or quasi-investment-grade counterparties;
- – hybrid storage portfolios where volatility supports optimisation returns;
- – strategic platforms where scale itself becomes an asset enabling later refinancing or partial sell-down.
The text ties these preferences back to how guarantees for merchant solar work alongside debt for CfD-backed assets—and how catalytic lending supports both regional energy security initiatives and green-economy investments at country level via institutions such as the EBRD and EIB.
