European Corporate Renewable PPAs Slide for Second Year as Grid Bottlenecks Bite

Corporate power purchase agreements for renewable energy in Europe totalled 5.9 GW through October 2026, a 9.7% decline from the same stretch last year and on course for a second consecutive annual drop — even as Brussels adopted an electrification action plan that targets a doubling of the electrification rate, to 46%, by 2040.

The pullback unfolded against the backdrop of RE-Source 2026 in Amsterdam, where roughly 1,400 delegates examined a market that has grown enormously — from around 3 GW across its first four years to a cumulative portfolio of about 60 GW — yet is now straining under structural pressures.

Three barriers dominated discussion:

• Capture-price erosion. Spain logged around 920 hours of zero or negative wholesale prices by early November. Silvia Escudero, Statkraft’s head of upstream origination for Iberia, warned that economic or technical curtailment can strip 35–50% of a plant’s solar output, depending on how constrained the grid is.
• Connection queues. About 500 GW of renewable projects are waiting for grid access, and congestion cost European systems an estimated €9 billion in 2024. WindEurope deputy CEO Malgosia Bartosik was blunt: everything, she said, “starts and ends with the grid.”
• Transmission tariffs. Axpo’s Domenico Franceschino noted that a standalone battery in France can face grid-access charges of around €50,000 per MW per year — exceeding its annualised capital cost.

Hybrid contracts are gaining ground as a practical response. LevelTen’s Max Plumptree noted that one in four platform requests in the third quarter attracted a hybrid proposal. Rockwool’s Kenneth Dupont pointed to a hybrid PPA finalised in Poland and a blended structure selected in Romania, reflecting his own rule of never contracting all of a site’s consumption through one PPA.

Source: pv Europe