* Financing pick-up seen for renewable projects
* New investors expected to look at region
By Michael Kahn
PRAGUE, March 11 (Reuters) - Financing for renewable
projects in the Central European region is picking up despite a
murky regulatory landscape in some countries that scares off
potential investors, fund managers and bankers said.
Credit remains tight but a return to profit for big banks
and a better understanding of the renewable sector in the region
is helping to boost financing, they told a two-day renewable
energy financing conference ending on Thursday in Prague.
"The appetite from banks has changed rapidly because they
have more visibility," Vivek Mittal, managing partner of
Millennium Resource Strategies in London. "The dynamics of the
sector have also become more clear."
Generous feed-in tariffs, European Union renewable targets
and a need for new sources of energy make the region an
attractive place for investors.
In 2009, for example, the Czech Republic ranked third in
Europe in the number of new solar projects thanks to feed-in
tariffs as high as 469 euros per megawatt hour.
"We see central and eastern Europe as a tremendous
opportunity," said Daniel Von Preyss, managing director, private
equity, at Impax Asset Management in London. "We have looked at
the Czech Solar market, Poland's wind market and are looking
with great interest in Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania."
Some investors and analysts are downbeat following a U.N.
summit in Copenhagen in December which failed to set a deadline
for a new legally-binding climate treaty to replace the Kyoto
Protocol in 2013.
But stimulus cash to re-ignite sagging economies will likely
find its way into renewable projects in 2010 as new investors
from outside Central Europe target the region.
Michael White, managing director at Prague-based Enercap
which specialises in private equity investments in renewable
energy projects in central and southeastern European, cited
biomass as an "exciting" sector but said regulatory uncertainty
would keep his fund out of certain countries.
"We are seeing new players coming in from Asia who are
building up flagship projects as a beachhead for other projects
in Europe," White said. "You will also start to see some of the
insurance funds and pension funds starting to come into the
(renewable) market."
Daniel Kockisch, a vice president at UniCredit Bank Austria
noted banks that had retreated to core markets mainly in western
Europe due to the financial crisis were now beginning to look
eastward again.
Improvements in the private financing sector had also helped
establish a healthy pipeline of wind projects in Poland, the
Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, he added.
"What is very important for the region is the return of
opportunistic lenders like commercial banks," Kockisch said. "I
am quite confident they will start coming back and in general
there are good opportunities to finance wind projects in the
region over the next one or two years."
(Editing by James Jukwey)
