Smartenergy and ABB announced this Wednesday, 4, a strategic collaboration to accelerate, reduce risks and scale renewable energy and hydrogen projects in southern Europe.
“The collaboration brings together Smartenergy’s project development, financing expertise and early-stage pipeline with ABB’s global leadership in electrification, automation and digital technologies, creating a solid platform aimed at providing integrated, bankable and future-proof energy infrastructures,” they said in a statement.
Through this collaboration, Smartenergy and ABB will cooperate “from the earliest stages of project development to align technical design, financing structures and implementation strategies”.
As they explain, the early involvement of development and technology partners aims to “reduce execution risks, reinforce bankability and accelerate time-to-market”, with the collaboration also intending to support the creation of “a replicable model of sustainable and intelligent energy infrastructures that can be implemented in multiple projects and geographies”.
“Smartenergy contributes a solid pipeline of renewable energy and hydrogen projects, extensive experience in project development and licensing, as well as access to a well-established investor network. ABB complements this with its technological leadership in power electronics, grid connection, energy management systems, automation and digital solutions, which are critical for integrating solar, BESS and hydrogen assets into reliable and efficient energy systems”, they concretize.
According to the two companies, southern Europe is asserting itself as “one of the most dynamic regions in Europe for the next phase of the energy transition, driven by exceptional solar resources, the rapidly growing demand for battery energy storage systems (BESS) and the growing dynamism in ‘renewables-to-hydrogen’ projects and ‘renewables-to-AI’ applications”.
At the same time, the market is evolving beyond isolated renewable assets towards fully integrated energy ecosystems that combine generation, storage, grid integration, automation and hydrogen production.
“This strategic collaboration was designed to respond to this transformation and enable scalable, multi-technology renewable platforms”, they state, highlighting that “a joint approach from the planning phase of these assets will optimize efficiency, resilience and quality through ‘digital twin’ simulations, the full digitalization of assets with the appropriate selection of equipment and systems, and the application of AI-driven intelligence in both planning and operation”.
Initially, the collaboration will focus on a joint ‘pipeline’ of solar, ‘renewable-to-hydrogen’ and ‘eSAF’ (synthetic and sustainable aviation fuel) projects in Spain and Portugal, but the ambition is to expand it to broader, multi-technology energy platforms, including solutions that support grid stability and the growing demand for energy from new industrial and digital applications.
The first ‘eSAF’ and ‘renewable-to-hydrogen’ projects have a combined budget of 4,000 to 5,000 million euros.
By aligning financing capabilities with technical leadership, Smartenergy and ABB say they aim to establish “a new benchmark for developing scalable, resilient and smart energy infrastructure.”
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