It was once called the Solar-Dax, the Tec-Dax.

Around a dozen of the 30 Tec stocks came from the field of renewable energies.

But then the Chinese came.

Their solar modules were cheaper, maybe better, and the German solar industry was wiped out.

Bankruptcies and price falls swept the shares off the floor.

And that although everyone wants to invest greener money.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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    But now comes Blue Elephant Energy. The Hamburg solar company could be the first in many years to go the opposite way: going public instead of withdrawing from the stock market. The ground is prepared. In March, the Deutsche Börse decided: Encavis and Nordex move up to the M-Dax, SMA Solar to the Tec-Dax. After years of backward movement, solar and wind stocks are rising again for the first time. Proof that investors are trusting solar and wind companies again after times of disastrous losses. The share prices have recovered strongly at times, and recently they have fallen again a good deal.

    As unsteady as the wind and the sun, critics will say. But if you take a closer look, you will find business models that are much easier to plan and calculate than in most other industries. Blue Elephant, for example. "90 percent of our sales over the next 15 years have already been firmly contracted," says Felix Goedhart, who founded the company five years ago. He buys and operates solar and wind parks. He doesn't want to have anything to do with the risks of permits, that's what project developers, with whom he has worked for many years, do. If they have all the permits in their pockets and can build, Goedhart gives the money with his Blue Elephant Energy AG and later sells the electricity.

    For many years, feed-in tariffs have been the magic word that usually guarantees fixed prices for electricity for twenty years.

    "We are now completely competitive, are moving away from the feed-in tariffs and concluding contracts with the pantographs directly with long terms," ​​says Goedhart.

    Blue Elephant in Spain has just finalized such a project with a German energy supplier who is buying electricity from a 150-megawatt solar park in Spain for ten years.

    High solar returns in the Caribbean

    Blue Elephant has a strong presence with its projects in Western and Southern Europe, operates the largest solar park in Greece and is the market leader in the Netherlands. But the largest solar park in the Caribbean is also on the books of the Hamburg company. “We have a long-term contract with the state energy supplier of the Dominican Republic,” says Goedhart. “The return there is much higher than here, but the risks are also greater.” He is running a similar project in Chile. "We only do this together with partners that we have known for a long time, such as DEG, the German Investment and Development Company, a subsidiary of KfW." Such projects then include the construction of solar systems in schools, the purchase of fire engines and the support of hospitals and the food supply."That is only possible in close cooperation with the local community."

    The number of hours of sunshine would make such projects seem sensible in Africa too. “But that is very challenging in these countries. We're not doing it yet, we also have to keep an eye on the investors and the security of their money, but with project developers we know and flanked by DEG that would also be conceivable, ”says Goedhart. The 57-year-old manager founded the company together with eleven colleagues with whom he worked at Encavis. Goedhart headed the Hamburg company that has just been promoted to the M-Dax for nine years as chairman of the board and turned it from a threatened mini-company into one of the leading solar park operators in Germany.

    With the money from the Wacker (Wacker Chemie) and Jahr families (formerly Gruner and Jahr) as well as his own funds, he then dared the adventure of starting all over again with Blue Elephant. Around one billion euros has since been invested in 74 solar and wind parks ranging in size from 10 to 100 soccer fields. “We need a flat area for this, sometimes it is industrial wasteland, but usually agricultural areas with at best mediocre soil quality,” says Goedhart. “Anything else would also put us under considerable pressure to justify itself. We take great care that nature is not damaged as much as possible and that renaturation takes place elsewhere. "