GARBE Industrial Real Estate Plans to Equip All of its Logistics Assets with Photovoltaic Systems

News 31/03/2022

Hamburg, 31 March 2022. GARBE Industrial Real Estate GmbH, one of the leading specialists for logistics, industrial and technology properties in Germany and Europe, is committed to the sustainable generation of electricity from solar energy, and planning to equip the logistics assets under its management with photovoltaic systems in the years ahead. As early as 2020, the company formed a wholly owned subsidiary, GARBE Renewable Energy – GREEN GmbH (“GARBE Green”), toward this end.

Jan Dietrich Hempel, Managing Director of GARBE Industrial Real Estate GmbH, said: “Unlike other asset classes, logistics properties with their large roof surfaces, plain façades, manoeuvring and parking spaces are virtually predestined for installing PV systems and generating electricity from solar energy. Better yet, the tenants’ own consumption is comparatively low at 10 to 20 percent, leaving plenty of electricity to be fed into the grid. We have identified a potential of up to six million square metres in eligible surface area among our properties. This would suffice to install between 400 and 600 Megawatts in PV capacity for sustainable electricity production.” GARBE has already equipped, or is in the process of equipping, around 230,000 square metres of roof surfaces with PV arrays, which is enough to generate about 25 Megawatts of solar power. “By the end of this year, we plan to have added around 50-70 Megawatts. Our portfolio properties are being retrofitted, whereas the plans for new-build developments already include PV systems as standard features,” elaborated Mathias Wasko, Managing Director of GARBE Green.

However, Germany’s lawmakers would be well advised to speed up the PV expansion by revising the legal parameters. Mathis Wasko, an expert of solar power, explains: “Using PV arrays is a very forward-looking and sensible measure that we at GARBE started to implement early on. Still, we see plenty of room for improvement in the latest draft bill* to make solar energy more attractive and easier to use for the occupiers of our warehouses. For example, generating your own electricity for on-site consumption involves a rather long-winded process and requires the installation of two separate PV arrays. Even using electricity tariffs for other warehouses, also called reroutability, has ceased to be an option, so that in practice we face considerable losses whenever construction plans are revised. Moreover, the de minimis limit for tenders should be raised to one Megawatt, as demanded by the EU as well, in order to put the feed-in tariff on a fairer basis.”

The subsidiary acts as an internal service provider for GARBE, and is responsible for funding, planning, implementing and operating the PV systems. For instance, GARBE Green procures the PV panels directly in China.