European energy giant announces shift from solar to onshore wind and storage

Italian energy giant Enel, one of the biggest energy companies in Europe, has announced a plan to shift its attention away from large scale solar projects to onshore wind and dispatchable technologies such as hydroelectricity and battery storage.

The change of course was revealed in its new strategic plan for 2025-27 that was unveiled at its Capital Markets Day on Monday where Enel outlined its plan to spend €48 billion split across renewables and energy grid upgrades.

Enel says it will exit coal power generation in 2027 as part of its longer-term goal of reaching net zero by 2040, and it plans to invest heavily in both energy grid and around 12GW of new wind and solar capacity in coming years.

However, Enel is switching tracks and aiming to build out what it calls “an improved technological mix” made up of over 70 per cent onshore wind and dispatchable technologies such as hydro and batteries, up to an overall capacity of around 76GW.

Onshore wind is expected to account for nearly half of the €12 billion while spending on solar will account for just 13 per cent of the company’s spending. The rest will be shared between hydro and battery storage.

The company describes the move towards onshore wind as an effort to be “more selective” and to “maximise profitability and minimise risk”.

But it is a significant change of course.

Its 2024-26 strategic plan, unveiled in November of 2023, included a €12.1 billion spending budget with a split of 37 per cent on solar and 32 per cent on onshore wind. That was expected to add more than 6 GW of solar capacity.

Enel’s new plan sees only 3.2GW of new solar capacity by 2027, but 5.7GW of new onshore wind, 700MW of new hydro power, and 2.3GW of new battery storage capacity.