Project Finance In 2025: Volumes Are Back, But The Rules Have Changed
- AI staff
- Nov 11
- 8 min read
Updated: Nov 20
There is a quiet paradox at the heart of project and infrastructure finance in 2025.
On one hand, global capital deployment into energy and infrastructure is hitting record levels. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects total energy investment to reach about US$3.3 trillion in 2025, with US$2.2 trillion flowing into clean energy alone—roughly twice the amount going to fossil fuels. At the same time, infrastructure funds are sitting on hundreds of billions in dry powder, and new mega-funds continue to close despite a difficult fundraising backdrop.
Yet many sponsors still describe 2025 as “the hardest year in a decade” to get a deal over the line.
What’s going on is not a shortage of money. It’s a change in what gets funded, where, and on what terms. For developers and investors planning pipelines into 2026, understanding that shift is now a strategic necessity rather than a nice-to-have.
1. A Banner Year For Capital – But a More Selective One
If you zoom out, the headline story is clear: energy and infrastructure are at the center of the global capital allocation agenda.
The IEA’s World Energy Investment work shows that clean energy spending has accelerated since 2020, with investment in renewable power, grids and storage now higher than total spending on oil, gas and coal.
Independent analysis suggests more than U$2.2 trillion will go into clean energy and electrification in 2025, again roughly double fossil fuel investment.
A UN-backed review of recent deployment trends concludes that renewables have reached a “positive tipping point”: in 2024, wind, solar and other green technologies accounted for over 90% of new electricity capacity added globally.
On the private-capital side, the Global Infrastructure Hub’s Infrastructure Monitor 2024 makes an equally important point:
Infrastructure fund dry powder ( capital that is available but not yet invested) has risen from US$68 billion in 2010 to USS$74 billion in 2023, even as annual fundraising dipped in 2023–24.
North America and Europe now attract the majority of that private infrastructure capital, reflecting perceived legal certainty, scale and stable regulatory frameworks.
So why does it often feel like capital has gone missing?
Because volumes are high, but tolerance for risk is low. Investors are leaning into large, strategically aligned, repeatable themes—while ruthlessly filtering out anything that looks marginal on policy, counterparties or project execution.
2. How Deal Flow Is Shifting By Geography and Theme
North America and Europe: still the core, but the mix is changing
In both North America and Europe, the dominant themes are converging:
Energy transition is now mainstream infrastructure, not a niche.
Clean technologies and grid investments account for the majority of incremental energy capital. Renewable generation, storage, and grid reinforcement fit squarely into the “core plus” and “value-add” buckets that infrastructure investors favour.
Digital infrastructure is becoming a project-finance asset class.
The explosion of AI and cloud workloads is driving a wave of data-centre investment. Banks have just underwritten an US$18 billion project finance loan for a new data-centre campus in New Mexico linked to Oracle—structured very much like a classic large infrastructure deal. Analysts estimate that the broader AI data-centre build-out could reach US$750 billion in current and upcoming projects, with a portion financed through project debt and long-term infrastructure capital.
Investor sentiment is cautious but constructive.
Roland Berger’s Infrastructure Investment Outlook 2025 describes 2024 as another challenging year for infra deal activity, but notes that investors remain cautiously optimistic for a recovery, with growth anchored in energy transition, transport decarbonization, circular economy and digital infrastructure.
The result is a two-speed market:
Well-packaged energy and digital infrastructure in advanced markets are seeing intense competition from funds, banks and private credit.
Projects with policy ambiguity, merchant exposure or frontier jurisdictions are facing higher pricing, more conditions precedent, or outright “no” decisions.
For sponsors, where you sit on that spectrum is now the key determinant of whether your project ends up as a headline closing—or a great idea that never quite clears credit committee.
3. Why So Many Projects Still Fail To Reach Financial Close
In conversations with lenders, funds and DFIs, the friction points that kill deals in 2025 are remarkably consistent.
First, policy and permitting risk.
Many governments in North America and Europe are simultaneously pushing for faster deployment and tightening community and environmental standards. That inevitably creates friction. When permitting timelines are uncertain or grid queues are opaque, banks simply apply tougher sensitivity tests—or ask sponsors to shoulder more risk.
Second, merchant and offtake risk.
The fact that clean energy is cheaper than ever does not mean merchant projects are easy to finance. In volatile power markets, lenders still strongly prefer contracted or availability-based revenues. Where pricing is partly merchant, they expect credible hedging, strong sponsors and robust downside analyses.
Third, technology and execution risk.
While there is real enthusiasm for hydrogen, carbon capture and next-generation storage, most commercial debt appetite is still concentrated in technologies with a clear track record. Novel business models can get funded, though usually with more equity, mezzanine or concessional capital in the mix.
Fourth, thin equity and unrealistic budgets.
After several years of cost inflation, any hint of under-scoped capex, optimistic contingency or weak EPC risk allocation will slow a deal dramatically. Infrastructure investors and credit committees have seen enough cost overruns to be sceptical by default.
None of these themes are new. What is new is that, in a world awash with alternative opportunities, investors feel no urgency to compromise.
4. Strategic Opportunities For Sponsors and Investors Heading Into 2026
The good news is that this environment doesn’t just close doors; it opens very specific windows of opportunity for those who can position themselves correctly.
4.1. Designing platforms, not one-off projects
A recurring message in the Roland Berger outlook is that investors are increasingly drawn to platform stories: pipelines of similar assets with shared governance, technology and documentation.
For developers, that means:
Standardizing PPAs, EPC contracts and ESG reporting across multiple sites.
Thinking in terms of “portfolios” of solar-plus-storage plants, EV charging networks or data-centre campuses rather than isolated projects.
Using warehousing or holdco structures that allow you to aggregate and refinance assets on better terms.
Structurally, platforms de-risk execution, provide scalability and make it easier for large funds to write meaningful cheques—critical when so much dry powder is in the hands of a relatively small number of large managers.
4.2. Capitalizing on the energy–digital convergence
The second major opportunity is at the intersection of power and digital infrastructure.
We are rapidly moving into a world where:
Data centers are treated as long-lived infrastructure with contracted revenues and credit-worthy tenants.
Their enormous power demand becomes a catalyst for new generation, storage and transmission projects—what KKR has called the “digital power problem”.
For project sponsors, this suggests several practical plays:
Structuring co-located power-plus-data campuses, with integrated PPAs, capacity contracts and flexibility services.
Repurposing brownfield sites—retired plants, industrial zones, interconnection-rich locations—as AI-ready hubs.
Offering investors a blended exposure to real estate-like cashflows and utility-like power contracts within a single platform.
These structures are already emerging in North America and Europe; by 2026, we expect them to be a mainstream component of project-finance pipelines.
4.3. Brownfield upgrades and grid modernization
A third, often under-appreciated, opportunity lies in upgrading existing infrastructure rather than building anew.
Given fiscal constraints and public fatigue with mega-project delays, regulators are often more willing to approve:
Life-extension and performance upgrades for existing plants and networks;
Efficiency and resilience projects framed as protecting existing service levels rather than adding capacity.
From a finance perspective, these projects can often be structured as capex backed by existing regulated or contracted cashflows—precisely the profile long-term infrastructure investors like. When combined with modest equity injections and smart refinancing, they can deliver attractive, stable returns with lower development risk.
4.4. Blended finance for cross-border growth
The uncomfortable reality is that the clean-energy boom is still heavily concentrated in advanced economies. The IEA and UN both warn that developing economies face much higher financing costs, which is why regions such as Africa account for only a tiny share of new green capacity despite huge need.
For sponsors willing to work in emerging markets, this creates a specific niche: bankable blended-finance structures, combining:
DFI or multilateral guarantees and subordinated tranches;
Export credit agency support for equipment and engineering;
Local-currency components where feasible;
Hard-currency revenues via offtake contracts with creditworthy buyers.
These deals are complex, but they speak directly to the mandates of many institutional investors and development institutions: measurable impact plus resilient cashflows. The sponsors who learn this structuring language in 2025–26 will command a genuine competitive advantage.
4.5. Smarter capital stacks and private credit
Finally, higher base rates have made capital stack design more important than ever.
We are seeing increasing use of:
Private-credit unitranche and mezzanine facilities to take construction or ramp-up risk, with a planned refinancing into cheaper bank or capital-markets debt once assets are de-risked.
Tax-credit bridge structures in markets such as the US and Canada, where energy and clean-tech investment tax credits can be monetized quickly, improving early-stage equity returns.
ESG-linked margin ratchets, where pricing steps down as projects hit verifiable decarbonization or social-impact milestones.
For developers, the takeaway is that capital structure is not an afterthought. It is core to bankability and valuation. A project that can flexibly accommodate banks, private credit, tax-equity, DFIs and institutional debt will simply have more paths to financial close than one relying on a single channel.
5. What Developers and Investors Should Do Now
If 2024 was a year of adjustment and 2025 is a year of selective growth, 2026 is shaping up to be a sorting mechanism: the projects and platforms that are genuinely aligned with the new rules of the game will scale rapidly; the rest will struggle for attention.
From Amimar International’s vantage point across multiple markets and sectors, three practical priorities stand out:
Design for bankability from day one.
Put offtake quality, risk allocation, contingency and governance at the centre of project design—not as a late-stage optimization. Credit committees are more conservative than the headlines suggest.
Build narratives that match capital’s themes.
Whether you are developing a grid-scale storage portfolio in Europe, a cross-border logistics corridor, or a series of AI-ready campuses in North America, frame your project in the language investors are using: energy transition, digitalization, resilience and measurable impact.
Plan your financing journey as a lifecycle, not an event.
The optimal path increasingly involves multiple phases—development equity, construction private credit or bank clubs, tax-credit monetization, and eventual refinancing into long-term institutional capital. Sponsors who map that journey early will negotiate from a position of strength.
At Amimar International, we see 2025 not as a difficult year for project finance, but as a clarifying one. The capital is there. The need for infrastructure is undeniable. The difference between a funded project and a stranded one now lies in how intelligently it is structured, positioned and sequenced.
If you are reassessing your pipeline for 2026 and beyond (whether in energy, digital, transportation or industrial infrastructure) this is the moment to stress-test your projects against the new reality, and, where necessary, redesign them for the market that actually exists.
Ready to position your project for financing success in 2026? Contact Amimar International to discuss how our specialized project finance consulting services can help you navigate today’s complex capital markets and optimize your development for financing.
**This analysis is based on comprehensive research of market data, banking reports, and regulatory publications current as of November 2025. Market conditions are subject to change.
Sources
Atlantic Renewables. (2025, November 1). Renewables pass “positive tipping point” globally, UN reports. Atlantic Renewables.
Biswas, P. (2025, November 7). Banks lend $18 billion for Oracle-tied data center project, Bloomberg News reports. Reuters.
Borenstein, S. (2025, July 22). UN says booming solar, wind and other green energy hits global tipping point for even lower costs. AP News.
Global Infrastructure Hub. (2024). Infrastructure monitor 2024: Report.
Global Infrastructure Hub. (2024). Infrastructure monitor 2024: Infrastructure funds (Section 2).
International Energy Agency. (2024). Renewables 2024 – Executive summary.
International Energy Agency. (2025). World energy investment 2025.
International Energy Agency. (2025, June 5). Global energy investment set to rise to $3.3 trillion in 2025 amid economic uncertainty and energy security concerns.
McKinsey & Company. (2025, September 9). The infrastructure moment: Investing in the expanding foundations of modern society.
Owens, B. (2025, October 9). The age of compute: How AI and data centers rewired global energy investment. AIxEnergy.
Roland Berger. (2025, July 15). Infrastructure investment outlook 2025.
United Nations. (2025). UN energy transition reports: Seizing the moment of opportunity & Renewable energy makes economic sense [Referenced via AP and secondary summaries]. Core report link (where accessible):
