Investing in Climate 4/5 : Why Renewables Still Have Room to Win
Written by Liselotte Forgeot & Paul-Adrien Marie
Welcome to the fourth chapter of our deep dive into climate investing.
At Breega, we’re constantly asking: How can founders and investors most effectively accelerate decarbonisation?
After exploring how best-in-class impact funds like Breakthrough Energy and LowerCarbon Capital approach the energy transition, we broke it down into four key verticals: Energy Management, Fusion, Renewables and Storage.
Today, we focus on Renewables — a mature sector, yet still brimming with white spaces for innovation, differentiation and impact.
Where We Stand: Renewables in 2025
Renewable energy is no longer emerging — it’s a cornerstone of the global decarbonisation strategy.
The Main Pillars
- Wind: harnessing air currents to generate power, with offshore installations pushing new frontiers.
- Solar: converting sunlight into electricity, from large-scale farms to distributed rooftop systems.
- Hydropower: using flowing water for reliable baseload electricity.
- Biomass: producing energy from organic matter and industrial waste streams.
- Geothermal: tapping heat from deep within the earth to deliver constant, clean energy.
France: Ambitious but Realistic
By 2035, France aims to:
- Double installed renewable capacity from 63.5 GW (2023) to 140–175 GW.
- Achieve 35–40% renewable electricity share (vs ~30% today).
- Reach 560–700 TWh of low-carbon electricity to meet electrification demand.
Longer term, the target remains clear: carbon neutrality by 2050, with renewables providing over half of the country’s electricity.
Europe: A United Push
The EU’s 2030 goal:
- At least 42.5% renewables in final energy consumption.
- Sector-specific targets: 49% in buildings, 42% renewable hydrogen, 29% in transport.
By 2040, emissions must drop by at least 90%, powered by massive renewable deployment and electrification across all sectors.
Key Takeaways
Ambition is high, but execution demands:
✅ Streamlined permitting.
✅ Competitive technologies and business models.
✅ Massive public and private investment.
Innovation Hotspots
While large parts of the renewable sector are mature, significant innovation opportunities remain — especially at the intersections of innovative technologies, new business models, and smart go-to-market approaches.
Mature but Moving
Some segments are competitive, but not fully played out:
- Solar B2B is highly mature, with tight margins and large incumbents dominating. But Solar B2C still has room for growth in specific countries like France, as startups like Ensol develop tailored residential and SME offerings supported with an energy management system & innovative financing solutions.
- Wind energy is a global workhorse, with offshore remaining particularly dynamic. While large infrastructure players dominate, startups like Airloom Energy (US) — backed by Lowercarbon Capital and Breakthrough Energy — are reshaping economics with lightweight, modular turbines that reduce costs and adapt to diverse environments, addressing the recent slowdown in LCOE declines due to post-2022 inflationary pressures.
- Hydropower is steady and largely consolidated — with innovation limited to infrastructure upgrades, efficiency gains, and national-scale projects. Not much room here for disruptive startups, but meaningful modernization at scale still matters.
In short: solar and wind continue to attract innovation on the edges — through customer-centric B2C models, cost breakthroughs, and novel deployment strategies.
Emerging Frontiers
The more niche renewable sources — geothermal, ocean, and bioenergy — are less mature, and fertile ground for bold innovations.
Geothermal
- Zanskar (US) applies AI-driven exploration and data analytics to identify the best geothermal resources faster and cheaper, cutting prospecting risk.
- Fervo Energy (US) leverages horizontal drilling and fiber optic sensing — techniques from the oil & gas industry — to unlock scalable, reliable, and competitive geothermal power, particularly suited for 24/7 loads like data centers.
- Accenta (France) focuses on geothermal heat storage and energy optimization for buildings, offering turnkey solutions to decarbonize heating and cooling in dense urban environments.
- Baseload Capital (Sweden) is both investor and developer, funding and building small-scale, distributed geothermal plants globally, designed to complement intermittent wind and solar with 24/7 baseload power.
Ocean energy
- Seaturns (France) is pioneering wave energy conversion technology, designing modular and robust systems to capture wave power efficiently and scale industrially.
- CorPower Ocean (Sweden-based) provides turnkey wave energy systems using compact, high-efficiency “point absorbers” that tune and detune via their WaveSpring tech — surviving Atlantic storms while producing clean electricity per buoy at a fraction of previous cost. They deploy modular “CorPacks” of 10–20 MW scale for wave farms, and recently secured €32 M in Series B to commercialise after successful C4 deployments off Portugal and Scotland
Bioenergy
- LanzaTech (US) converts industrial gas waste (CO, CO₂) into sustainable fuels and chemicals through microbial fermentation — a circular, carbon-negative approach that has attracted over $500M in funding pre-IPO.
- Amyris (US) engineers microorganisms to produce renewable molecules from sugar fermentation, used in fuels, cosmetics, and fragrances — a biotechnology pioneer with over $500M raised.
- Propel Fuels (US) builds and operates a network of clean fuel stations distributing advanced biofuels at scale.
- Waga Energy (France) recovers landfill biogas, purifying it into grid-quality renewable natural gas — already listed on Euronext after raising €124M.
- Lhyfe (France) produces green hydrogen from bio- and renewable energy sources, enabling low-carbon industrial applications — publicly listed after raising €50M.
What Breega takes from this
For investors, the message is clear: renewables are mature — but innovation is still rewarded.
We’re particularly interested in:
- Startups addressing intermittency challenges.
- Teams rethinking business models and GTM strategies.
- Players tackling overlooked segments of industrial decarbonisation.
That’s why we backed Stations-E, innovating in EV charging infrastructure with an original business model. And why we’re particularly attentive to companies like Epyr, which revolutionize low-temperature industrial heat — a market traditionally left to incumbents — through smarter, more efficient renewable solutions.
What’s Next
In renewables, the smart move isn’t just to build capacity — it’s to build better.
By innovating how we deploy, sell, and integrate renewables, founders can still create outsized impact — and returns.
In the next (and last) chapter, we’ll dive into the Storage vertical — the key to unlocking the full potential of renewables.
If you’re a founder in this space, we’d love to connect.
Let’s build the future together.
