In October 2025, a renewables company known as Nala Renewables sought to finance a project for a Battery Electrical Storage System (BESS). The acquisition was from a Swiss-based company, Fu-Gen AG.
White and Case (W&C) first represented Nala in the acquisition, conducting due diligence, structuring the conditions of the transactions, and assessing the potential financial and legal risks. W&C then represented Nala in the project financing, helping generate funding into a financial package.
This deal was followed in 2025 with another acquisition of a BESS of 250MW, bringing the total BESS portfolio in Finland to 300MW. There are four sites for the project to commence in early 2026.
What is a BESS and Why Does it Matter?
A Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) is a structure that uses Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries to store energy. Oftentimes they are used to ‘save’ energy in case of a shortage. This is especially helpful for renewable sources of energy, as in the case of hydroelectric power, wind farms and solar panels, they are inconsistent in their energy output due to seasonal and climate variations.
BESS’s are incredibly helpful for storing electricity from renewable sources for their storage. This makes them an asset for many countries who are maintaining their climate pledge to become carbon neutral. This is the case especially in Finland, whose goal is to attain carbon neutrality in 2035 compared to 2050. This means that there is a lot of planning for renewable sites, creating a volatile market where a large profit could be gained. Policy also supports these investments. In March 2025, Finnish Parliament approved a proposal for tax credits on R&D developments, which BESS’s are included in. Reduced tax expenses create a more attractive net income, which in turn creates more motivation to pursue a profit that is higher as a result of new policy.
This is ideal conditions for Nala Renewables. First of all, they are a UK based company with a portfolio in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. Expanding into Finland means that they expand further into the European market and specifically break into the Nordic Market. Additionally, the policy surrounding Finland’s Climate pledge means that investing in a Finnish portfolio is slightly lower in cost, but with volatility providing a higher reward.
What Did The Lawyers Do?
When an acquisition occurs, a company will normally raise the funds to acquire the portfolio through a mixture of debt and equity. This is because both types of funds have different procedures to issue and recover if things go wrong. In this case, a mixture of debt is good because it requires less regulatory procedures to issue, and so is faster to build. On the other hand, debt has more ramifications if something goes wrong down the line, in comparison to equity; equity does not usually get recovered if all goes wrong.
The main part of an acquisition for a lawyer is to conduct due diligence and ensure that the structure of the deal benefits their clients (and mitigates any potential risks). Typically, they also create the main agreement for the company to purchase the other, known as the Sale and Purchase Agreement (SPA). The SPA also contains warranties, which are legally binding promises about the asset (in this case, the 50MW BESS). If the warranty turns out to be untrue later in the process, then people who funded the acquisition may have grounds to claim against the seller.
Due diligence and risk mitigation is a core part of a lawyer’s work in an acquisition, as well as project financing. It allows for both parties to be aware of the conditions of the sale and make an agreement with transparency and clarity, with a structure in place to mitigate when things can potentially go wrong.
What Are The Trends?
More deals to build BESS closer to the deadline of 2050 places pressure on sourcing materials to build these structures. Much of a battery’s products are sourced outside of the EU. Because of this, risks such as price fluctuation, sanctions and conflict means there is a risk that this supply may not be accessible or the prices become volatile, placing risk on the investment into renewable energy.
The content of this article is good context for Vulcan Energy’s financing package to complete the first lithium project in Germany. That project is to produce lithium domestically in the EU, instead of importing it as the EU has historically done. Given that there is a paper trail of project backings and acquisition of renewable portfolios, as well as a political pressure for EU countries to meet their climate goals, it appears increasingly urgent to have resources domestically rather than import them to increase accessibility and avoid the potential volatility of resources in international conflict.
Some companies are selling their renewables portfolio because they would like to reuse the capital. Companies such as Fu-Gen AG may find that the regulatory risks of having a portfolio outweigh the benefits of other investments; Fu-Gen specialise in 9GW of BESS. Therefore it seems that the capital was simply better redistributed in the context of Fu-Gen in particular. A similar case was Aneo’s acquisition of REO’s wind farms in 2025. REO’s upkeep of their portfolio to meet regulatory standards was outweighed by the potential of reusing the capital from the sale to improve domestic investments in the UK. What we can draw from this is that if one project doesn’t return at a high enough rate, companies may elect to simply redeploy the capital from that project to a better use.
Written by Olivia Omotajo-Jensen
17 April 2026