Amsterdam-based ZonnepanelenDelen, a platform that helps initiatives and building owners organise crowdfunding for their solar energy system, announced on Thursday that it has raised €20M from ING Business Banking for the sustainable project financing that the platform offers to business owners.
A capital injection of €2.2M from ING Sustainable Investments, existing investors DOEN Participaties, and Danish investment company Obton, will help ZonnepanelenDelen to further digitalise and upscale its platform and give more small-scale energy projects easy access to financing.
Annemein Kolk, Head of Business Banking at ING Netherlands, says, “ZonnepanelenDelen is an innovative financing platform that can contribute to the energy transition and has been particularly successful with solar roof projects. With our investment in the platform via ING Sustainable Investments, combined with financing from ING as a bank, small-scale projects will be offered a suitable project financing solution, which in turn will facilitate a major rollout.”
Kolk adds, “We at ING are keen to help promote the financing of solar panels for business owners, both via our own bank financing solutions and via the standardised asset-based financial solutions that ZonnepanelenDelen offers. In this way, we enable SMEs to contribute significantly to climate goals and so further drive the energy transition. To achieve this, ING will first provide €20M in financing for ZonnepanelenDelen.”
“Solar Energy. From everyone. To everyone.”
Founded in 2014 by Matthijs Olieman and Sven Pluut, ZonnepanelenDelen aims to accelerate the energy transition by making the financing of solar energy simple and accessible to all.
The platform finances small-scale solar power projects by offering financial leasing, bank loans, and bond issues through its online platform. Digitalising the financing process and standardising the necessary documentation makes it possible for smaller projects to obtain attractive financing.
In a short period of time, the company claims to have grown to become the biggest independent financing platform for commercial solar panel projects, with 10,000 ZonneDelers helping make more than 1 million solar panels possible.
In 2016, ZonnepanelenDelen was nominated by the UN for the United Nations Lighthouse activity award because of its solution that contributes to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The company has a licence to provide investment services as defined in article 2:96 of the Dutch Financial Supervision Act and is listed in the licence register of the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets.
Capital utilisation
ZonnepanelenDelen says the fresh funds can help expand and bolster its market position in the Netherlands, for instance by rolling out a financial leasing solution for SMEs. With financial leasing, users of solar panels immediately become their owners.
Besides, the functionality of the platform will also be expanded and will be opened to all the solar power projects currently running in the Netherlands. The €20M funds that ING is making available will help grow the platform’s total capacity for facilitating solar power projects to more than €100M in the coming year.
Sven Pluut says, “Besides financing, our platform offers smart solutions for the successful realisation and management of small-scale solar projects. Using production data and technical information from more than one million financed solar panels on our platform, we’re going to offer an online ‘solar MOT’. This check will show whether you’re getting maximum return from your solar power project and will flag issues. It will also be possible to share project information with third parties such as installers and insurers, and we will introduce smart alarm functions to reduce missed production. This will enable our platform to play a crucial role in the operational phase of solar projects, thereby helping the owners of solar power projects to increase returns and reduce risks.”
About ING
ING is a financial institution with a strong European base, offering banking services through its operating company ING Bank. ING Bank’s more than 57,000 employees offer retail and wholesale banking services to customers in over 40 countries.
ING’s ESG rating by MSCI was upgraded to ‘AA’ in December 2020. The Group shares are included in major sustainability and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) index products of leading providers STOXX, Morningstar and FTSE Russell.
01
Job board for modern workforce: How Remote Talent helps jobseekers find truly remote, distributed work