Interview with Erwan Fournis, Chief Transaction Officer, SOL-R Global Infrastructure
In the global race towards the energy transition, the success of a renewable energy project is undoubtedly influenced by well-known factors such as the technology employed, grid connection efficiency and the speed of the permitting process. Yet there is another decisive element that completes the picture: the management of the land on which renewable energy infrastructure is built.
In a market that has now reached maturity, but where margins are under increasing pressure, energy prices remain volatile and interest rates demand stricter financial discipline, developers and utilities are facing a silent but unavoidable challenge: the burden of capital tied up in land ownership.
Today, securing land for renewable energy projects is no longer simply a legal or real estate matter. It has become a genuine financial engineering challenge. Purchasing land, or managing fragmented lease agreements with dozens of private landowners, absorbs valuable capital that could otherwise be invested in developing new projects or repowering existing ones.
This naturally raises an important question: does it still make sense to own the land used to generate renewable energy? Or does the key to faster growth lie in strategically separating land ownership from infrastructure management?
To better understand this evolving model, inspired by land management practices in the telecommunications sector, we spoke with Erwan Fournis, Chief Transaction Officer at SOL-R Global Infrastructure, an investment platform created specifically to address this challenge.
Separating the asset from its operation: the evolution of business models
Until a few years ago, purchasing land was considered the safest way to secure a long-term investment. Today, experience gained in other mature infrastructure sectors, particularly telecommunications with transmission towers, has demonstrated that land ownership does not create direct value for an energy project. Secure, legally enforceable access to the site is the only true prerequisite. This principle forms the foundation of SOL-R Global Infrastructure’s strategy, as Fournis explained during our interview.
Fournis, who is SOL-R Global Infrastructure, and what role does the company aim to play in the renewable energy market?
Erwan Fournis: SOL-R Global Infrastructure is a real estate investment platform specialising in a very specific asset class: land hosting energy infrastructure. This includes sites used for photovoltaic plants, battery energy storage systems (BESS), electrical substations and other capital-intensive energy assets.
The company was founded around three years ago by Carlo Toic and our CEO Marc Bataillon, both of whom came from the telecommunications industry. It was there that they recognised a similar opportunity that could be applied to the renewable energy sector, where projects depend heavily on strategically located land already connected to the electricity grid.
Our role is to provide financial solutions for every stakeholder in the value chain, including landowners, developers, independent power producers (IPPs) and utilities, by offering solutions that optimise capital allocation and improve investment returns.
Today we operate across Europe, with teams in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Greece, Germany and Poland, while continuing to assess new opportunities throughout the continent.
SOL-R works with landowners, developers and large utilities. How does your business model operate, and what specific problem do you solve for each of these three groups?
Erwan Fournis: Our business model is built around providing tailored financial solutions for these three categories of stakeholders, each of whom faces different challenges but shares a common need: specific land availability and access to capital.
For landowners, we solve a liquidity issue by unlocking the value of what has become a relatively illiquid asset. Once land has been leased for an energy project, the owner receives an annual rental payment (often heavily taxed) but has very limited financial flexibility,. We offer them the opportunity to sell the land and receive immediately the equivalent of many years of lease income upfront, typically between twelve and fifteen years depending on the market. This provides immediate liquidity that can be reinvested in agricultural activities, estate planning or other investments in asset classes closer to the landowners knowledge and management.
For developers, we remove the burden of land acquisition, improving overall project economics at a time when project valuations are under increasing pressure. Many developers secure land through preliminary purchase options before selling the project to an investor. We can assume the obligation to purchase the land ourselves, acquire it directly, and subsequently lease it back to the project company. By removing this substantial upfront cost, which does not in itself generate additional revenue, the project requires less capital and becomes more attractive to future buyers. This becomes extremely useful for developers that aim to sell the projects at COD.
For IPPs and utilities, our solution is primarily financial. In a market where electricity prices are declining while debt obligations remain high, if they already own the land, we can purchase it and lease it back to the project. This effectively converts part of their capital expenditure (Capex) into operating expenditure (Opex). Doing so strengthens the company’s balance sheet, while the released capital can be used to reduce debt, support growth or finance new projects.
This is even more effective when the project is sold on the secondary market, where the original land purchase is unlikely to result in a higher transaction value.
Where land is leased from multiple private owners, we consolidate ownership by acquiring the different parcels. The project operator then deals with a single institutional specialist counterpart rather than numerous landowners or their successors, simplifying management and reducing long-term uncertainty.
Why should a developer or an IPP choose to work with SOL-R instead of retaining direct ownership of the land?
Erwan Fournis: Fundamentally, owning the land does not create any additional value for the energy project itself. Access to the land is essential, but ownership is only one way of securing that access. A long-term lease agreement can provide exactly the same level of operational certainty while avoiding a significant upfront capital investment.
Many investors are initially concerned about what may happen at the end of the plant’s first operating cycle, particularly when repowering becomes necessary. This concern often stems from their experience with private landowners, whose priorities and circumstances may change over time. Our position is entirely different. We are an institutionallandowner focused exclusively on energy infrastructure. Our business model is built around supporting energy projects, and it is in our own interest to continue leasing the land throughout future stages of a project’s development. By partnering with us, developers and IPPs can preserve their capital and redirect those resources towards developing new projects, accelerating growth instead of tying up funds in land acquisition.
In Italy we have seen pipelines of authorized projects, where the availability of the land has been secured through extremely onerous commitments (both purchase and lease). Unfortunately, a high percentage of projects are orphaned (authorized without a final investor) with the same common denominator. SOL-R is willing to look at those projects in order to find a solution that is both satisfying for the landowner and the final investor.
In a previous interview, SOL-R COO Carlo Drazen Toic said that your approach allows companies to “convert part of their Capex into Opex”. How does this work in practice?
Erwan Fournis: That is an accurate description of our business model. For the project owner, purchasing the land represents a capital expenditure (Capex) incurred during the initial investment phase. By acquiring the land ourselves and then leasing it back to the project, we eliminate that upfront investment and replace it with a long-term rental payment.
In this way, part of the Capex is effectively converted into operating expenditure (Opex). The capital that would otherwise have been tied up in purchasing the land can instead be allocated to strengthening the company’s financial position, reducing debt or financing new projects. As competition in the renewable energy market continues to increase and project margins come under growing pressure, this type of financial flexibility is becoming increasingly valuable.
The macroeconomic environment of recent years has fundamentally changed the rules of the game. Whereas obtaining a permit once almost automatically led to construction, today’s market requires much stricter standards in terms of financial sustainability and technical viability. What are the main land-related challenges currently affecting photovoltaic projects?
Erwan Fournis: One of the main challenges concerns the agreements between developers and landowners. Many of the purchase agreements we see today were negotiated several years ago, when obtaining planning consent was often enough to move quickly into the construction phase. Market conditions have since changed considerably. A project may now be fully permitted but still not ready to be built because financing, power purchase agreements or investor commitments have not yet been secured. As a result, the conditions traditionally included in land purchase agreements are no longer always appropriate. From ourexperience, as highlighted above, a permitted project is not necessarily a bankable project.
Another challenge concerns projects that already own their land and financed the acquisition through debt. In these cases, the land is often included as collateral for lenders, making any subsequent transaction more complex. Furthermore, many of these projects were financed during a period of exceptionally low interest rates, which inevitably affects the financial assessment of any restructuring transaction.