February 28 (SeeNews) - The five EU member states in Southeast Europe (SEE) posted a 30% year-on-year jump in combined revenue from renewables to 12.9 billion euro ($ 13.7 billion) in 2021, with Romania accounting for over half of that total, or 6.6 billion euro, a report published by Sofia-based business intelligence platform SeeNext on Tuesday showed.
Bulgaria was ahead of Croatia, Greece, Romania and Slovenia in terms of annual market expansion, with revenue from renewables surging by 44% on the year to 1.3 billion euro in 2021, closely followed by Romania with 41%, according to the report entitled, Renewable energy in Southeast Europe: Shifting into higher gear. The report analysed the performance of 2,567 companies across the five countries from 2019 to 2021.
You can download the 2024 Renewable energy in Southeast Europe report here
Bulgaria’s strong market performance was due to an almost two-fold increase of the aggregate revenue of companies in the construction, engineering and project development segment in 2021. By contrast, Croatia lagged behind in the ranking with an increase in revenue of only 7% in the review period. Slovenia and Greece booked revenue growth of below 20% each.
The report highlighted the importance of the solar photovoltaic and onshore wind sectors for the monitored countries. With an impressive share of 83% of companies across the full value chain active in solar and wind, Romania again topped the rankings, closely followed by Greece with 82%. In Bulgaria, however, solar is much more underdeveloped, with three-quarters of local companies active in the onshore wind sector.
In Slovenia and Croatia, hydropower and biomass and gas from renewables dominated the market. In Slovenia, 34% of all companies in the sector focus on hydropower against under 15% in all other countries analysed by SeeNext. In Croatia, energy generation from biomass and gas from renewables was in the focus of 24% of the companies, compared to less than 5% in the other four countries covered by the report.
Italy emerged as the largest foreign investor in the SEE renewable energy sector, with a 16% ownership of non-local businesses. However, a distinct feature of the sector across the region was the predominance of local ownership - a mere one in five companies have overseas majority owners. Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria were among the other important foreign investors in the SEE renewables sector.
The establishment of renewable energy companies accelerated significantly in the years since 2019, with one in ten new companies hailing from the sector, following a previous boom in renewables in the 2007-2013 period. The accelerated pace of development was also reflected in the headcount, with a rise of 1,200 to over 33,400 in total across the five countries during 2021.
($=0.943 euro)