Shell cashes in on subsidies by selling green projects
Shell is selling wind and solar farms built with government support to TotalEnergies and KKR, turning its back on green energy.
Published on August 3, 2026
Merien co-founded E52 in 2015 and envisioned AI in journalism, leading to Laio. He writes bold columns on hydrogen and mobility—often with a sharp edge.
Shell is pulling the plug on its European wind and solar farms. The oil and gas group is selling its entire onshore portfolio to France’s TotalEnergies and US investment firm KKR. This strategic exit exposes a painful dynamic for Dutch taxpayers. For years, the government took on the financial risk of these projects through billions of euros in subsidies. Now that the farms are operational, Shell is cashing in on the investment and the infrastructure is passing into foreign hands.
The major sell-off of green infrastructure
Shell is selling a European renewable energy portfolio totalling four gigawatts to TotalEnergies. The package includes 500 megawatts of operational projects. These functioning wind and solar farms are located mainly in Italy and the Netherlands. The Dutch projects have a combined peak capacity of more than 254 megawatts, roughly half the capacity of the Borssele nuclear power plant. TotalEnergies will integrate these farms into its own growth strategy. The French energy company aims to produce more than 100 terawatt-hours of net electricity by 2030.
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At the same time, TotalEnergies is sharing the financial risk of other projects with private equity. The company is selling a 50% stake in a separate 1.2-gigawatt portfolio to KKR. The deal with the US investor represents an enterprise value of €1.8 billion. Shell is deliberately heading in a different direction. At the end of 2025, the company had already announced that it would manage its electricity portfolio more strictly. Shell is ending its ownership of physical wind and solar farms.
Risk-free construction at the state’s expense
The Dutch government played a crucial role in the development of Shell’s farms. It covered the financial risk through the so-called SDE subsidy schemes. These operating subsidies compensate for the difference between the cost of producing green electricity and the market price.
Shell built six major projects with this government support. The Pottendijk Energy Park in Emmen combines wind turbines and solar panels with a capacity of 100 megawatts. At 71.1 megawatts, the Koegorspolder solar farm in Terneuzen is Shell’s largest solar farm in Europe. Projects in Moerdijk, Heerenveen and Sas van Gent also received subsidy commitments worth millions of euros. The government removed the investment risk. This allowed Shell to develop and build the farms without major financial dangers. Now that the infrastructure is operational, Shell is withdrawing from the projects. The company is selling the physical assets and collecting the proceeds. The Dutch state will continue to pay out the agreed subsidies. From now on, these public funds will flow to TotalEnergies and KKR.
No brake on foreign takeovers
The sale of subsidised infrastructure faces no legal barriers. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO, applies no restrictive clauses to the transfer of SDE subsidy decisions. The subsidy is strictly linked to the physical production of green electricity. The nationality or ownership structure of the operator plays no role. TotalEnergies must complete the administrative transfer procedure with RVO.
RVO only assesses whether the new owner receives too much state aid under European rules. Once approved, the subsidy decision is transferred to the new owner’s name. There are no mechanisms requiring financial compensation for the government when a project is resold. The government does not claim a share of the sale proceeds. This policy follows European rules on the free movement of capital. Restrictions on the transfer of projects would hamper their ability to attract financing. The result, however, is that projects made risk-free with taxpayers’ money can be traded effortlessly on the international market.
Tax avoidance as a business model
Shell’s financial contribution to the Dutch treasury stands in stark contrast to the government support it receives. Shell pays virtually no corporate income tax in the Netherlands, according to a recent investigation by Follow the Money. The group makes clever use of fiscal unities and the offsetting of losses. Internal services are supplied to foreign subsidiaries at below-market prices. As a result, taxable profits in the Netherlands evaporate.
The construction of large-scale renewable energy projects reinforces this effect. The high initial investment costs of farms such as Pottendijk and Koegorspolder generate substantial tax depreciation. This depreciation creates a tax shield. In the first few years, this shield reduces the farms’ operating profits to zero. Shell therefore most likely paid no tax on the income generated by these specific projects. Through subsidies, taxpayers finance the unprofitable portion of the farms. At the same time, the operator does not contribute to public finances through taxation. This reveals a one-sided financial relationship between the state and the business community.
The end of a political illusion
For decades, Dutch politicians have embraced Shell as an indispensable partner in the energy transition. Policymakers saw the company as a necessary force for carrying out major green projects. In 2020, Henri Bontenbal, now leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal, CDA, warned against polarisation and lawsuits targeting the oil company. Cooperation with major companies, he argued, was the only way forward. Shell’s current sell-off punctures this political illusion. Shell is not a public utility with a social mission. It is a commercial player that allocates capital to the most profitable activities. For Shell, generating physical green electricity does not deliver sufficient returns compared with oil, gas and energy trading.
This transaction goes to the heart of European and Dutch economic autonomy. Critical energy infrastructure is increasingly shifting into the hands of a select group of global players and private-equity funds. TotalEnergies is consolidating its power in the European electricity market. Investors such as US private-equity firm KKR are using financial structures to gain access to the guaranteed returns offered by renewable energy projects. The revenues from Dutch wind and solar farms flow directly across the border. This systematically extracts value from the local economy. Local communities experience the burden of wind turbines and solar farms, but do not share in the financial benefits.
The government must prevent public money from serving as a risk-free lever for international providers of capital. Under a well-designed subsidy policy, the government should share not only in the risks, but also in the successes.