Dusseldorf. At the beginning of September, Enerparc, one of Europe's largest solar park developers, unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy. Now insolvency administrator Stefan Denkhaus is cautiously optimistic. The operational business continues. “We managed to stabilize the business,” Denkhaus told Handelsblatt. The sales process has officially started.
The first partial sale should be completed by December. “Further park portfolios are scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2027,” says Denkhaus. Overall, an attempt is being made to sell the company as a whole. But other solutions are also conceivable. “There is great interest,” says Denkhaus. Discussions with the first potential buyers are already underway.
Since its founding in 2008, the Hamburg developer has relatively quickly become one of the largest solar planners in Europe. The founders Christoph Koeppen, Stefan Müller and Frank Müllejans are among the pioneers of the energy transition. The company now operates worldwide and is one of the market leaders with a portfolio of more than 500 solar parks with a total installed capacity of 3.8 gigawatts. For comparison: This corresponds roughly to the output of almost four large coal-fired power plants.
With an almost completely integrated chain of hundreds of subsidiaries and investments, Enerparc covers almost every step in the value chain - from Sunnic for the marketing of green electricity, to pvwerk for the construction of the parks or Sonnen Tiefbau for the construction of foundations and routes. And all this in a complex network surrounding Enerparc AG, which is now insolvent.
In the meantime, pvwerk and Sonnen Tiefbau have also filed for insolvency under self-administration. According to Denkhaus, it has so far been avoided that even more of the 492 companies associated with Enerparc could go bankrupt, but: "With the group being this large, further filings for insolvency can never be ruled out."
The market for large solar projects has become significantly more difficult in recent months: regulatory uncertainties, stalled financing and falling electricity prices have slowed down many projects. There is also a fundamental change: Although the expansion of renewables continues, it no longer works financially as it did in the early years of the energy transition.
For a long time, many projects operated in a heavily government-driven funding environment with comparatively easy-to-calculate revenues. With the transition to a free market, the requirements for balance sheets, liquidity and risk management also increase. Fast-growing developers in particular now have to manage much larger projects, organize significantly more capital and manage more complex risks than they did ten years ago. What this means in practice can be seen in the Enerparc case.
Enerparc took advantage of the overall weak market situation to aggressively push forward its own projects. The group grew so quickly through new projects, portfolio acquisitions and complex project companies that in the end the internal structures could no longer keep up.
Although the company had announced a financing package of up to one billion euros for several solar parks and battery projects in the spring, according to the administrator, only around 30 percent of this had been drawn by the time of bankruptcy. Further financing for several photovoltaic projects with battery storage failed at the end of June. Enerparc could no longer fulfill its obligations - and the already heavily burdened system collapsed.
At first glance, the most recently published annual financial statements for 2024 looked robust: Enerparc AG reported an annual profit of 53.8 million euros. At the same time, however, the operating cash flow was clearly negative at minus 80.9 million euros - a sign that the company increasingly had to pre-finance its growth.
Shortly before the bankruptcy filing, the equity ratio was only four to five percent, according to company circles. At the same time, liabilities currently total around 3.3 billion euros. Because Enerparc AG was not only a holding company but also a general contractor, high supplier, financing and project burdens converged there. When financing for several battery projects was no longer available as planned, Enerparc slipped into insolvency.
According to the insolvency administrator, around 90 projects are currently under construction. In total, there are projects with an output of 1.7 gigawatts that are not yet connected to the grid. The investment bank Rothschild & Co. was commissioned with the mandate for the transaction.
Enerparc's bankruptcy caused a shock in the industry. Many observers do not see the decline of the solar pioneer as a systemic problem, but neither do they see it as an isolated case. “This will not be the last bankruptcy,” says an industry insider.
