Few topics at the Solarplaza Summit Nordics in Copenhagen on 15 September 2026 drew as many different opinions as the PPA market. Mikkel Kring, Partner at Our New Energy, opened the final session with a data-heavy and largely sobering presentation. He then moderated a panel with Liisa Rajala Malmgren, Chief Legal Officer at Alight, Jan Rigtrup, Director of Portfolio Management at Mind Energy, and Ville Väre, Managing Director Nordics at NW Groupe. The panelists didn't always share his view of the market, which made for one of the day's liveliest discussions.
Key takeaways
- The numbers are weak: European PPA volumes are down about 30% year-on-year, and only two solar PPAs have been signed in the Nordics so far in 2026.
- Interest has not disappeared: Alight still sees demand for plain pay-as-produced solar PPAs, and buyers are increasingly driven by cost and energy resilience rather than sustainability alone.
- Risk is the sticking point: Producers, traders, and buyers all want to offload risk, and the gap between what producers need and what buyers will pay is still too wide for most 10-year deals.
- Timing is a dilemma: With prices expected to rise, signing a PPA today may mean selling too cheap, yet almost nobody will build without contracted revenue.
The starting point: a market that has stalled
Kring began with two audience polls. The first asked whether the recent insolvencies of several European developers would push up return requirements. Most respondents expected a small increase of less than one percentage point. Kring explained why that matters: citing Lazard's analysis, a one-percentage-point rise in the cost of capital lifts the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) by roughly 10%. A project that needed a PPA price of €45/MWh would suddenly need around €50/MWh.
The second poll asked whether attendees would take a final investment decision on a new Nordic solar project without a PPA. Out of roughly 25 responses, Kring counted perhaps one yes. Banks and equity investors alike are reluctant to back fully merchant utility-scale assets.
The numbers behind the slowdown
Across Europe, PPA volumes are down about 30% year on year, with the average monthly volume signed falling from 1,197 MW in 2025 to 816 MW in 2026. Kring pointed to three causes:
- Prices: Low power prices and low capture rates make PPA prices look too high to buyers.
- Better-informed buyers: Corporates now understand capture rates better than they did a few years ago.
- Regulatory uncertainty: Upcoming changes to sustainability accounting rules may stop companies from covering demand in several countries with a single cross-border PPA, leading to smaller, local deals.
The Nordic market has historically transacted around 3 TWh per year. So far in 2026, it stands at about 1.4 TWh, from three PPAs in Finland, four in Denmark, and two in Sweden. Only two of those nine are solar.
Kring's outlook
Kring estimates that fewer than 10% of projects are looking for offtake. Denmark has little energy-intensive industry, and new offshore wind will no longer compete for PPAs now that it receives subsidies. Data centers and Power-to-X could change the picture, but he noted that the Danish Energy Agency has just revised its data center expectations sharply downward.
He advised IPPs to size projects for the buyer, either below 20 MW for single- or multi-buyer deals or above 80 MW for data centers and Power-to-X, and to avoid the 20–80 MW range in between. He recommended combining solar with storage to offer corporates a monthly baseload product, and expects tough market conditions to lead to consolidation and high M&A activity.
"Quite a negative picture": is the demand still there?
Rajala Malmgren was the first to push back. "You painted quite a negative picture here earlier," she told Kring. "We do still get interest in plain vanilla, pay as produced, PV PPAs." Alight has projects ready for PPAs and live dialogues with buyers in Sweden, she said, while acknowledging that rising capital costs and regulatory scrutiny make deals harder.
Kring was not fully convinced. In his experience, buyers often stay "interested and interested and interested" while two years pass without a signature. Rajala Malmgren's reply: "Have a little patience and you'll see."
What buyers really want
The two also disagreed on what drives corporate buyers. Kring suggested Alight's offtakers are mostly companies buying for reputation, for whom the power price matters less. Rajala Malmgren answered, "yes and no." Five years ago, sustainability and climate goals led the discussion, but today buyers focus on competitiveness, affordability, and energy resilience. She said she has not received calls from offtakers unhappy that market prices fell after they signed, because larger buyers take a longer view and value price certainty.
Rigtrup described buyers as "getting wiser and wiser," which is part of why PPAs have become scarcer. Many now realize that a pay-as-produced solar profile doesn't match their consumption, and they want stability and predictability most. Finnish greenhouses are a clear example. With 80–90% of their costs tied to electricity and most of their consumption in the first and fourth quarters, a solar PPA simply doesn't fit their needs. Mind Energy instead pools output from several producers into a more stable profile and segments buyers by their consumption.
Smaller buyers, bigger role
The panel also disagreed on how much small and medium-sized companies can contribute. Rajala Malmgren described a multi-buyer pilot at Alight: a project with a bankable anchor offtaker, where the remaining volume is offered to smaller companies on shorter or more flexible terms. When Kring described smaller buyers' credit as "dodgy," she countered, "I'm not sure I would use the word dodgy." In her view, a project can even be built entirely on multi-buyer offtake, for example, with a pool of buyers that agree to take on more volume if one of them drops out.
Who should carry the risk?
The sharpest exchange came over who should hold the risk that producers and buyers both want to get rid of. Kring argued that traders understand it best, "so you should take it." Rigtrup agreed in part, but framed it as a question of reward. "We won't take too much risk if we don't see the reward for it," he said. In his view, the whole value chain needs to share the risk, since investors, producers, traders, and consumers all want to offload it.
Kring then made it concrete. Would Mind Energy offer a 10-year pay-as-produced PPA for a 50 MW solar park in Denmark or southern Sweden? "We could, but I don't think there's a market for it at the moment," Rigtrup replied, because the price Mind Energy could offer would be too low for the producer. Kring estimated that Danish solar needs around €45/MWh to work, and Rigtrup did not have a number to match.
Shorter hedges are in demand
The current spike in power prices has created a different kind of demand. Rigtrup said Mind Energy is getting many calls from spot-exposed customers, especially smaller companies, looking to hedge. Some do it reluctantly to cap their losses; others as part of a broader strategy. Those deals tend to cover one or two years, not ten. The gap between what producers want and what buyers want is still too big for longer contracts.
Storage owners make their own call
Väre described a third approach. NW Groupe operates more than 1,000 small batteries of around 1.25 MW each, mostly in DSO grids, and mainly finances them with equity. It uses several external aggregators alongside its own in-house aggregator, partly to manage risk and partly to stay close to the market. Because floor and tolling prices in Finland and Sweden are currently low, NW Groupe compares them with its own market view, and where the offers fall below that view, it chooses to stay merchant.
That view has had to adjust. Väre said a megawatt of storage in Finland used to earn close to €400,000–500,000 per year, while recent index figures show less than €100,000. Paybacks that were once counted in months are now closer to 10 years. "Now you need to be a bit smarter and really think over the 10- to 20-year period of the battery's lifetime," he said.
Co-location: the product buyers want, or a grid workaround?
Kring's proposed answer to the PPA slump was a new product. Combine solar with storage, shape the output into a monthly baseload profile, sell that to corporates, and let a trader optimize the battery in the intraday and balancing markets. Rajala Malmgren confirmed that monthly baseload shaping is being discussed a lot, alongside setups where the buyer takes a fixed share of output and a revenue share on the rest.
Kring doubted whether corporates can price a share of battery revenues. Rajala Malmgren again disagreed: "A lot of them are very sophisticated and have their own energy sourcing teams."
Väre questioned the premise itself. In his view, standalone batteries and standalone solar parks have generally made the better business case on their own. Co-location brings some synergies, but "the real reason is the grid." With grid capacity the main constraint in the Nordics and across Europe, projects are being pushed together, and that is why standard hybrid products now need to be created.
Adding batteries to existing PPAs
For Alight, storage is now the default. All new projects include BESS from the start, and the company is checking which existing solar parks can be retrofitted. That raises a practical question when a park already has a PPA. Rajala Malmgren said it helps to build flexibility into the contract before signing. For older contracts, renegotiation works best when both sides benefit, either by keeping the buyer whole or by sharing the extra value through profile shaping or a revenue split.
The timing dilemma
Rajala Malmgren also raised a tension that complicates the whole debate. Prices are low today but widely expected to rise. "So when is the right time to enter into the PPA from our perspective? Are we selling it too cheap?" One answer is to avoid contracting everything, leaving some volume open to benefit when prices recover. Yet Alight still needs enough contracted revenue to finance its projects, and as Kring's poll showed, almost no one will build without it. For many developers, the choice is between signing at today's prices or holding ready-to-build projects until the market turns.
Where the panel did agree
For all the back-and-forth, the speakers shared more common ground than it might seem:
- Storage is central: Every panelist saw BESS as a core part of new projects, whether to raise the value of solar parks, shape a product for buyers, or work around grid limits.
- Think long term: Väre and Rigtrup both warned against short-term thinking now that battery paybacks are stretching toward 10 years.
- Buyers know more: Corporates understand capture rates and profiles far better than a few years ago, which raises the bar for any PPA offer.
- Contracted revenue still matters: Hardly anyone in the room was willing to build fully merchant.
- Data centers are watching: Rajala Malmgren said data center developers are actively looking for partners to bundle nearby projects for them, and Väre said NW Groupe has been approached by many of them, though the business model for combining batteries and data centers is not there yet.
Kring wrapped up with his own summary: corporate interest is there; it just moves slower than the industry would like.
Closing words
Whether the Nordic PPA market has stalled or is simply moving slowly depends on who you ask. The data supports Kring's caution, but the panel showed that deals are still being explored through multi-buyer pools, shorter hedges, revenue sharing, and hybrid products. What remains unresolved is how risk gets shared between producers, traders, and buyers, and when developers should lock in prices. Those questions will likely shape the market well beyond the next edition.
For the full picture of market dynamics, flexibility needs, and financing discussions from the Solarplaza Summit Nordics, read our complete event report: Nordic renewables are learning to live with volatility. Here's how.
