By 2025 renewable energy in South-East Europe is no longer primarily a state-utility story. Hydropower built before 1990 still sits largely in public ownership across the region, but almost every meaningful megawatt of wind and solar installed in the last decade belongs to private investors, international utilities, infrastructure funds, development banks and increasingly Gulf sovereign-linked capital. The South-East European energy transition is therefore being financed and owned by a layered capital structure that blends European industrial sponsors, institutional investors and international financial institutions, while domestic conglomerates gradually learn to sit at the same table.
Greece shows most clearly how this ownership transformation looks when it reaches maturity. The Greek state remains influential through PPC Renewables, which operates one of the largest renewable portfolios in the country, anchored in wind, solar and small hydro. But alongside PPC, Greece has evolved into a market dominated by major listed and strategic private players. Large renewable platforms are controlled by major Greek industrial groups, European energy utilities and new owners backed by Gulf capital. Wind and solar parks across Greece are held in project companies financed on classic project-finance terms, with ownership frequently split between a strategic operator (utility or developer) and long-term infrastructure investors seeking stable cash flows. This has created a renewable sector where the Greek state, private Greek capital, European strategic energy companies and Middle Eastern sovereign-linked investors coexist in the same ecosystem.
Romania and Bulgaria sit in a similar structural category, though each has its own industrial logic. Romania’s renewable ownership base today combines strong state players in hydro and nuclear, privately controlled utilities, large European energy companies, oil-and-gas incumbents diversifying into renewables and international project developers. Several of Romania’s largest solar and wind pipelines have changed hands in the last three years, as developers sold projects to large strategic buyers and infrastructure funds capable of taking assets into construction and long-term operation. Bulgaria’s renewable market has followed a comparable trend: domestic independent producers exist, but the main utility-scale projects are typically structured around international sponsors, European utilities expanding regionally, and financial investors comfortable with merchant exposure, corporate PPAs and subsidy stabilization schemes. In both countries European commercial banks, international development banks and large institutional investors are deeply embedded in the capital stack.
In the Western Balkans the picture is even clearer: hydropower is still largely public; almost everything else is private or foreign-backed. State utilities such as EPS in Serbia, ESM in North Macedonia, EPCG in Montenegro, KESH in Albania and the Bosnian entity utilities still own the old dam systems, cascades and legacy renewable assets. But the wind farms that now shape Serbia’s export balance, the solar plants entering the grids of North Macedonia and Albania, and the wave of large-scale projects moving toward construction in Bosnia and Montenegro are not owned by state utilities. They belong to independent power producers, most often backed by European developers, Israeli renewable companies, Italian project sponsors, domestic Balkan conglomerates partnering with foreign capital, or infrastructure investment funds positioned for twenty-year yield.
Serbia is a benchmark case study in this regard. The first real commercial wind portfolio was developed by private sponsors combining Italian development expertise with Serbian capital. Over time, international renewable players acquired or built their own assets, and new Serbian-foreign joint ventures emerged around 100 MW-class projects. When Serbia launched its renewable auctions, the overwhelming majority of bidders were private developers and foreign-backed companies, not the state utility. EPS is now moving into wind and solar, but the core growth and capital commitment so far has come overwhelmingly from privately owned project platforms. Debt financing for these Serbian projects typically blends European banking groups operating locally with development finance institutions, while equity is held by strategic sponsors, infrastructure platforms or specialized renewable investors.
Across North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Montenegro the financing and ownership DNA is similar. Old hydro sits on state balance sheets. New wind and solar capacity is controlled by foreign independent producers, joint ventures between domestic corporates and international partners, and increasingly infrastructure funds with patient capital. Most of these projects are financed under non-recourse or limited-recourse structures, meaning the banks and development institutions effectively underwrite the structure as much as the sponsor. This is precisely why Western European banks, large regional banking groups and international financial institutions play such a dominant role: they are not simply lenders; they are system enablers, deciding which projects materially move from PowerPoint to grid connection.
Above the project level sits a decisive financial layer. International development banks and European financial institutions have become anchor financiers of renewable build-out in South-East Europe. Their role is twofold: they provide long-tenor debt that commercial banks are reluctant to extend alone, and they de-risk early pipelines so that institutional capital can follow. Alongside them stand large European and global infrastructure funds, many of them multi-billion-euro vehicles backed by pension funds and insurance companies. These funds increasingly buy operating portfolios, take stakes in development platforms, or co-own individual wind and solar projects alongside strategic utilities. For South-East Europe, this means renewable ownership is being financialized: power plants are no longer simply engineering assets, they are long-term infrastructure yield assets owned by international institutional investors.
A second wave of capital now entering the region comes from the Gulf. Sovereign-linked renewable developers from the Middle East have secured controlling positions in major South-East European renewable platforms and are actively expanding into both EU and Western Balkan markets. Their investment logic is long-term, strategic, and scale-focused. They do not enter to build one project; they enter to anchor multi-gigawatt pipelines, regional integration strategies and long-horizon investment positions. This adds another layer of international ownership to the renewable structure of the region and reinforces the conclusion that the financial benefits of renewable deployment increasingly accrue outside local economies unless domestic actors strengthen their competitive depth.
If we simplify the ownership reality of South-East European renewables in 2025, several structural facts emerge. First, almost every large hydropower plant remains state-owned, meaning governments still control a substantial share of renewable electricity volumes today. Second, almost every large wind park and industrial-scale solar project commissioned in the last decade is either foreign-owned, co-owned with domestic partners, or financed primarily through European and international financial channels. Third, development banks, European banking groups and large infrastructure investment funds are the dominant decision-makers behind the scenes because renewable expansion in the region depends on their capital acceptance.
By portfolio weight, EU utilities, European industrial energy companies, private renewable developers, institutional infrastructure investors, Gulf-backed strategic investors and domestic conglomerates together now own the majority of new renewable capacity in South-East Europe. Local state utilities are gradually entering this field but remain behind the private market in speed, financial capacity and execution dynamics. As a result, cash flows from renewable tariffs, merchant electricity sales and corporate PPAs in the next twenty years will increasingly be captured by these international owners unless domestic utilities, domestic pension capital and national investment platforms accelerate their entry into equity ownership.
For policymakers, this ownership structure has a double meaning. On one hand, it has enabled a surge of renewable capacity that local capital markets could not have financed alone, accelerating decarbonisation, improving security of supply and strengthening export capacity. On the other hand, it means that a large share of long-term renewable income streams is externalised. The strategic challenge for the region is therefore no longer simply how to build renewable energy capacity. It is how to ensure that future renewable megawatts are not only produced in South-East Europe, but increasingly owned and financially retained by it.
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