Repsol has joined forces with Schroders Greencoat, the specialist renewables manager of Schroders Capital, as a 49% partner in a 400-megawatt (MW) wind and solar portfolio, valued at €580 million.
The portfolio includes eight wind farms, totaling 300 MW, in the northern Spanish provinces of Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. The agreement also includes two solar plants, totaling 100 MW, in the province of Palencia. All the assets are expected to be operational during the first half of 2025.
This agreement is a further step in Repsol's strategy for the renewable power business, which aims to optimise the financial structure and profitability of the projects by incorporating partners into the assets to improve value generation and generate double-digit returns.
As part of the transaction, in December 2024 Repsol arranged a long-term syndicated loan financing of €348 million with BBVA, Crédit Agricole CIB, Banco Sabadell, and the Official Spanish Credit Institute (ICO).
This is the fifth operation of its kind that Repsol has carried out since November 2021. Repsol currently has 3,700 MW in operation and a global project portfolio of 60,000 MW in various stages of development. In Spain, it has more than 2,600 MW of renewable energy in operation and more than 600 MW under construction and development.
Double vision?
Recent analyses—such as those by Reclaim Finance—indicate that although Repsol is increasing its renewable projects, the company still allocates a substantially higher share of its capital to oil and gas. The NGO has found that for every euro invested in its low‑carbon generation (LCG) business, which includes gas power, Repsol has historically committed roughly twice as much to its oil and gas activities.
Columbia Law School notes that highlighting renewable projects while continuing large-scale fossil fuel production could amount to “greenwashing by omission”. Other critics call for a more radical decoupling from fossil fuels rather than incremental steps that allow the core oil and gas business to remain largely unchanged.
Nevertheless, among European oil majors, Repsol’s strategy is relatively more ambitious, especially at a time when many European oil companies are scaling back their energy commitments. According to Repsol’s 2024–2027 Strategic Update, the company plans to allocate more than 35% of its total capex to low‑carbon initiatives.
Repsol’s approach—such as selling minority stakes in renewables to help finance further green investments and targeting an increase in renewable capacity—stands in contrast with companies like BP, which has cut spending on renewable energy to around 13-17% of its total capex, while planning to boost oil and gas spending.
Similarly, TotalEnergies has reduced its low‑carbon investment budget to approximately 28% of its total capex.
Shell has also dramatically scaled back new spending on low‑carbon projects, now only allocating roughly 10–15% of its total capex to renewables and low‑carbon energy initiatives in the 2025-28 period.
Meanwhile, Equinor, once seen as one of Europe’s more ambitious oil companies regarding energy transition investments, has halved its planned low‑carbon investments—from about $10bn to roughly $5bn per year over the next two years, or approximately 25–33% of its capex. Previously, the company had set a target to allocate over 50% of its capex to renewable energy and low-carbon technologies by 2030.
