1. Error: Buy renewable energy only via the stock exchange
An investment in renewable energies reflexively leads many to the clean energy ETF because it is the most well-known. However, this is only one way and may bring something different from what you are actually looking for.
Clean energy ETFs and thematic equity funds bundle equities from manufacturers and operators. Their price depends on and moves with the stock market, often strongly and far from the real economy’s actual energy needs.
Next to this is the tangible asset investment. Here, investors participate in the wind and solar farms themselves, for example via a fund such as an ELTIF. Such an investment is not valued on the basis of a stock market price, but on the basis of the real value of the investments and the cash flows generated by their electricity.
This alternative route is now widely available. At the end of 2025, 268 ELTIFs were registered across Europe, and in Germany around 60 percent of their volume flows into infrastructure with renewable energies as the central pillar.
It becomes dangerous for investors if you mix both ways. If you are looking for a stable investment in tangible assets that is decoupled from the stock market and instead use an ETF, you will get the opposite with the stock market product that fluctuates on a daily basis. Before buying, it is therefore worth asking which result you want: A near-exchange but fluctuating growth opportunity or a calm tangible asset?
2. Error: Confuse renewables with investment hype
Today, wind and solar farms supply more than half of the electricity in the German grid. Anyone who assumes that this is a temporary investment mode overlooks an asset class whose demand has been invested over decades and is sometimes even legally anchored.
Demand is driven by tangible developments. Data centres for AI consume so much electricity that individual operators plan their own power plants, while heat pumps and electric cars increase consumption in households. By 2030, the share of renewable energies in Germany’s gross electricity consumption is to increase to 80 percent, as stipulated by law.
The capital flows also contradict the fashion label. In 2025, around 2.3 trillion US dollars flowed into the energy transition worldwide, eight percent more than in the previous year. Short-lived fashion doesn't attract capital of this magnitude and doesn't last for years.
What started as a green idealist theme now accounts for a significant part of the power supply. The energy transition is real and the plants are producing continuously - regardless of whether the issue is currently in the headlines.
3. Error: Missing access to renewable energy
Real energy infrastructure is often still considered a luxury asset for those who can afford high minimum investments and long maturities. Such hurdles still give the impression that this asset class is only open to institutional investors and wealthy private investors.
This image is now obsolete, but not everyone has noticed it, so renewables are still hardly represented in many private depots. This wastes potential, as tangible assets from renewable energies provide income that is largely independent of the stock market and can act as a counterbalance to volatile equities and bonds.
The EU has opened access with the ELTIF. The investment vehicle was created to target private capital into infrastructure, bringing private investors into an asset class that was previously closed to them for the first time. The ELTIF 2.0 reform further facilitated this access in 2024, including a reduction in the legal minimum investment of EUR 10,000. Since then, new ELTIFs can already be bought for small amounts. Many ELTIFs are also semi-liquid, so it is possible to exit at fixed redemption dates even before the maturity date.
4. Error: Being deterred by the weather argument
Concerns about the weather sound obvious, but are misleading on closer inspection. An individual plant is actually dependent on the weather, because when the wind turbine is stationary, it lacks its yield. However, a broad-based fund bundles many investments and is designed to compensate for this fluctuation.
The first lever is geographical dispersion. Wind and sun complement each other, their generation profiles often run in opposite directions, and the further apart the locations are, the less often they fail together. At the same time, this reduces the risk of a dark whisper where neither sun nor wind are available at the same time.
The second lever is time. Yields are easily predictable over long periods of time. “Although electricity yields can fluctuate over the course of the day and also over the course of the year, these fluctuations smooth out in the long term,” explains Dr Nicole Arnold, Member of the Management Board of Commerz Real. “This makes it possible to predict the average wind yield and solar radiation per year at a certain location very well and reliably over the long term.”
The short-term deflections catch battery storage. They absorb the power of profitable hours and release it when the wind and sun fade.
The value fluctuation shows how calmly the asset class is doing. An unlisted energy infrastructure index shows a volatility of around 8 percent over ten years and is therefore below the broad infrastructure index.
5. Error: Measure an investment in government support
Measuring a renewable energy investment solely on the basis of secured promotion sets an outdated benchmark. The fault has a long history. For two decades, the Renewable Energies Act guaranteed operators a fixed price per kilowatt hour fed in, usually over 20 years. This certainty was deeply embodied, but had its price, as fixed remuneration capped earnings. If the market price rose, the operators did not benefit.
In the meantime, the fixed remuneration is no longer supported by the system anyway. “Where guaranteed revenues used to attract, spot market prices, weather data and network capacities now determine the revenue side,” analyses Timo Werner, fund manager at klimaVest. “Marketing green electricity is becoming more dynamic, but also more demanding.”
In 2024, around 72 percent of the electricity from promoted renewable plants was compensated via the market premium and another 12 percent via other direct marketing. The pure feed-in tariff with its guaranteed fixed price has become a secondary channel, and the electricity is currently predominantly actively sold on the market.
Long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) are an important tool for this. The producer sells its electricity for 10 or 15 years at a fixed price directly to an industrial customer, thus regaining some of the predictability that the EEG once offered.
There is also direct sales on the spot market. Here, the plant deliberately forgoes the fixed connection and benefits from high prices when electricity is scarce and expensive. The weak hours can be bridged with battery storage. The electricity remains in storage as long as supply exceeds demand and prices are in the cellar.
When comparing funds, a robust track record in electricity marketing and a broad portfolio with negotiating power with large customers are more important than the question of whether government subsidies are still in progress.
6. Error: Assimilate tangible assets to security
A real wind or solar farm seems tangible and therefore safer for many than an abstract financial product. However, security and stability do not arise from the tangible asset itself. It depends on how broadly an investment is spread and how it is structured. With direct participation in a single investment, the full project risk lies with investors - if a project fails, the money is lost. The Consumer Centre expressly warns against the total loss in the case of such direct investments.
This cluster risk is dissolved by funds that spread across many investments. An ELTIF may invest a maximum of 20 percent of its assets in a single investment, so no project alone pulls the fund down. For example, the klimaVest fund distributes its capital in 6 countries to 43 wind and solar plants as well as a participation in electricity grids. If one investment in the fund fails, the others continue to carry on and the impact on individual investors remains manageable.
In the end, however, stability is not only determined by the diversification in the portfolio, but also by who selects and operates the investments. Unlike an index fund that follows a formula, a tangible investment lives on the opinion of experienced asset managers who manage their parks even through difficult market phases. A robust track record therefore weighs heavier than the mere fact that real investments are behind it.
7. Error: Take the cheapest fund
You are used to trading apps: 0 euro custody account management here, no order fee there. But with a tangible asset investment, “geiz is geil” is not an advisable motto, because the running costs pay for a real service here.
Index funds automatically replicate a market and therefore have low costs. A fund that selects, operates and markets real wind and solar farms does something different. In the case of real investments, the result is determined by asset management, i.e. the experience and judgement of the people who lead a park through changing market phases.
A strikingly cheap fund may save money here, on asset management. On average, running costs in the ELTIF market are around 1.9 percent per year. Those who are significantly below this should ask where the discount comes from and whether they are saving on management, which first generates the returns.
Costs remain a useful criterion, but not the first. They make the difference when two funds hardly differ otherwise, and they become a warning signal when a fund without identifiable additional performance is significantly above market standards.
