When five of Turkey’s most established industrial groups quietly assemble multi-gigawatt pipelines in the same European country, it stops looking like opportunism and starts looking like a coordinated strategic call.
In late 2025 and early 2026, a striking pattern emerged in Central Europe’s renewable energy market. Koç Holding, Türkiye’s largest conglomerate. Tüpraş, the country’s biggest industrial enterprise and its largest oil refiner. Fiba Group, one of Türkiye’s most diversified private holdings. Ulusoy Enerji Yatırımları, a 200 MW renewable producer. Yeşilyurt Enerji, an integrated power and gas player. Each of them, independently, chose Romania as the next step in their European renewable energy strategy.
Roughly 200 Turkish companies, from developers to investors and equipment manufacturers, gathered at the Türkiye-Romania Energy Forum in Ankara in November 2025, with investment intentions estimated at several hundred million euros. The forum also marked the launch of the Black Sea Energy Cooperation Association (BESCA), a new regional platform bringing Romania and Türkiye together specifically around renewables, infrastructure and clean technology.
This is not a single deal. It is a beachhead. And the question worth asking is why now, and why Romania.
The deals are concrete, recent, and large
Koç Holding and Tüpraş: a 214 MW anchor near Bucharest
Through its renewable energy arm Entek Elektrik, a subsidiary of Tüpraş that operates as Koç Holding’s dedicated clean energy platform, the group completed the acquisition of a 214.3 MW photovoltaic project north of Bucharest. The transaction, executed through Entek’s investment vehicle Enspire Enerji, was agreed in June 2024 for an initial EUR 32.9 million, later revised to EUR 33.2 million. The acquired special purpose vehicles, Eco Sun Niculești and Euromec-Ciocănari, were previously held by Israeli developer Econergy. The project received technical connection approval from Transelectrica in 2023 for 177 MW.
In December 2025, Entek Elektrik signed the EPC contract with Romanian renewables company Waldevar Energy to build out at least 200 MWp of installed capacity at the Niculești site. It is Entek’s first project finance and construction step in Romania, extending a Turkish renewable footprint that already exceeds 490 MW domestically.
Worth noting: Koç Holding is not new to Romania. The group is already one of the country’s largest industrial employers through Arctic (white goods), Ford Otosan (vehicle manufacturing) and Otokar (commercial vehicles). The 214 MW Niculești project effectively co-locates renewable generation alongside existing Koç industrial demand and supply-chain infrastructure.
Fiba Group: 500 MW pipeline, 200 MW solar plus 106 MW storage already secured
In March 2026, Murat Özyeğin, representing Fiba Group, confirmed the group’s plan to develop 500 MW of combined wind, solar and storage capacity in Romania within five years. The first 200 MW solar tranche is already in development and is being paired with 106 MW of battery storage. Completion is expected within 18 to 24 months.
Fiba Group has been operating in Romania since 1997, when it opened the country’s first shopping mall. Today the group runs Fiba Renewables (Fiba Yenilenebilir Enerji Holding) with around 608 MW of installed wind and solar in Türkiye, and Credit Europe Bank in Romania. The 500 MW Romanian target sits inside a broader regional ambition: become a 1 GW renewable player in CEE.
Ulusoy Enerji: ready-to-build solar in Dâmbovița County
In July 2025, Akış Enerji, part of Ulusoy Enerji Yatırımları A.Ş., signed with Enexus for the Titu 1 project, a 20 MWp photovoltaic plant with a 20 MVA transformer station in Titu, Dâmbovița County. The project was already at the “ready-to-build” stage at signing, with construction, environmental and grid permits in place from Transelectrica and ANRE. Enexus delivers the project turnkey under a full EPC and O&M scope. The Ulusoy group brings a roughly 200 MW Turkish renewable portfolio across wind, hydro and solar.
What the press release called the first project in a series of “even larger investments to follow” effectively positioned Dâmbovița County as Ulusoy’s Romanian operating base.
Yeşilyurt Enerji: 41 MW ready-to-build PV park, also in Dâmbovița
In May 2025, Yeşilyurt Enerji acquired a 41 MW solar project in Dâmbovița County, advised by Dentons. The project, like Ulusoy’s, was in the ready-to-build phase, with all building permits already secured. Yeşilyurt is not a developer dipping a toe. The group runs a Natural Gas Combined Cycle Power Plant in Türkiye dating to 2013, has been a cross-border electricity trader in Central and South-Eastern Europe since 2017 under the Yesilyurt Energy Trading brand, and entered natural gas trading in 2019 with a Prague expansion in 2021.
In other words, Yeşilyurt already understood European wholesale power markets before buying Romanian solar. Romania is a logical generation asset to plug into an existing trading book.
The bigger picture: gigawatts in the Turkish pipeline
Industry voices at the Ankara Forum framed this as the early stage. Mesut Güler, CEO of Enexus, the Romanian EPC and investment facilitator that has structured several of the Turkish entries, put it directly: “Turkish investors are no longer in the analysis phase, but in the action phase. Over the next two years, we expect a significant increase in finalized investments, especially in hybrid and storage-integrated projects.”
Across the past two years, Turkish companies have announced photovoltaic and hybrid projects totaling several gigawatts across all regions of Romania.
Why Romania, and why now
Five different industrial groups, each with different core businesses and different home-market portfolios, do not converge on the same country by coincidence. They are responding to the same structural conditions.
1. A regulatory framework that is finally bankable
Romania’s two-way Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, designed with EBRD technical support and launched in 2024, has now run two auctions. The first awarded 1,488 MW of solar across 26 projects at a weighted-average clearing price of €51/MWh, well below the €78/MWh cap. The second auction, completed in August 2025, awarded 2,751 MW more. Combined, Romania has placed 4.2 GW of CfD-backed capacity, exceeding the 3.5 GW target in its Recovery and Resilience Plan. For an industrial group used to pricing fuel and feedstock against multi-year benchmarks, a 15-year two-way CfD is a familiar revenue contract.
2. Permitting speed that is rare in the EU
According to the Romanian Photovoltaic Industry Association (RPIA), utility-scale solar permitting in Romania now runs at roughly 1.5 to 2 years, among the fastest timelines in the European Union. For distributed systems up to 400 kW, approvals can be completed in around a month. For investors comparing Romania against Germany, France or Italy, this is the single largest non-financial variable.
3. Real grid headroom and a real coal phase-out
Romania has committed to phasing out coal by 2032 and is targeting more than 10 GW of solar by 2030. The country installed 2.2 GW of new solar capacity in 2025 alone, a third consecutive year of growth that took cumulative installed capacity past 7 GW. Utility-scale additions in 2025 were 1.2 GW, nearly doubling year-on-year. The market is being actively decarbonised, not aspirationally.
4. Geographic proximity that quietly matters
At the Istanbul-based “Regional Approach” energy conference, Turkish executives made the proximity argument explicitly. “I can drive to Bucharest in seven or eight hours. This proximity plays a significant role in our investment decisions,” one executive noted, referencing Koç Holding’s existing industrial footprint in Romania through Arctic, Beko and Ford. For Turkish industrial groups, Romania is the closest EU market that combines low operating costs, EU regulatory protection, and access to Central European power demand.
5. EU market access without EU input costs
This is the strategic point that does not always get said out loud. Türkiye is not in the European Union. Power generated in Türkiye cannot easily access EU offtakers, EU green-certification schemes, or EU-Taxonomy-aligned financing. Romania is an EU member state with the Black Sea as a shared coastline, a shared time zone, and a road network connecting Istanbul to Bucharest in under a day. For a Turkish group wanting to sell green power into EU corporate PPAs, qualify for EU green financing, or hedge against CBAM exposure on its industrial exports, Romanian generation is the most efficient solution.
6. Hybridisation is the price of entry, and Turkish industrial groups are already comfortable with it
Romania’s policy targets call for 5 GW of energy storage by 2030, and lenders increasingly price flexibility revenue alongside CfD revenue. Fiba’s 200 MW solar plus 106 MW storage configuration, and the broader Turkish push into BESS-integrated projects flagged by Enexus, reflect this. Turkish industrial groups operating refineries, manufacturing plants and grid infrastructure are structurally comfortable with managing energy storage assets. This is not learning curve capital. It is operational capital.
Why this matters beyond the deal flow
A few patterns are worth flagging.
First, the entry vehicles. Tüpraş bought permitted SPVs from Econergy. Fiba is building its own pipeline. Ulusoy and Yeşilyurt acquired ready-to-build assets from Romanian developers via Enexus. Three different M&A strategies, all converging on the same market. This points to a deeper liquidity in the Romanian project pipeline than is usually appreciated. There are developable, permitted assets available for acquisition at scale, which is the real precondition for industrial capital to move.
Second, the local intermediaries. Enexus, Waldevar Energy, Dentons, Vlasceanu & Partners and other Romanian advisory and EPC firms are emerging as the connective tissue between Turkish capital and Romanian regulatory and grid infrastructure. The Black Sea Energy Cooperation Association (BESCA), launched at the Ankara forum, is the institutional layer on top.
Third, the timing. Turkish entries in 2024 and 2025 came before the financing wave that arrived in late 2025 and early 2026, when UniCredit, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, Banca Transilvania and the EBRD anchored multi-hundred-million-euro syndicates for Romanian solar-plus-storage assets. The industrial groups went first. The banks confirmed the thesis.
Momentum Energy’s View
What is happening in Romania right now is the rarest pattern in European energy markets: industrial capital and banking capital arriving at the same conclusion at the same time, from different starting points.
For Turkish industrial groups, Romania offers something their home market cannot: EU regulatory status, EU-grade offtake routes, EU-aligned financing access, and a coal phase-out with real grid capacity opening up behind it. For Romania, Turkish capital arrives with the specific characteristics the market most needs at this stage of its development: long balance sheets, comfort with hybrid generation-plus-storage assets, and the operational depth to actually build and run large industrial-scale projects.
For developers and asset managers active in the region, the message is clear. The competitive dynamic in Romanian solar has shifted. The buyer universe is no longer just IPPs and infrastructure funds. It now includes Turkish refiners, automotive groups, financial conglomerates and integrated energy traders, each with a strategic rather than purely financial motivation. Ready-to-build assets, permitted SPVs and grid-connected pipelines are being absorbed faster than the market is producing them.
For investors and policymakers in the broader region, Turkey-to-Romania renewable flow is now arguably the most significant new cross-border industrial capital movement in CEE energy. It is structural, it is widening, and it is reshaping who actually owns Romania’s clean energy backbone.
We expect 2026 to deepen the trend further: more Turkish industrial groups crossing the border, larger ticket sizes per transaction, more BESS co-location, and more vertically integrated structures linking Romanian generation to Turkish industrial demand. The forum in Ankara was a soft launch. The capital is real, the projects are permitted, the grid connections are secured, and the financing infrastructure is now in place.
Romania did not market itself into this position. The fundamentals did the marketing. Turkish industrial groups are simply the first major foreign investor cohort to act on them at scale.
