More Occupational Pension Capital for the Transformation – Expert Dialogue with E.ON

High potential, not yet strategically leveraged

The overarching impression from the discussion: the potential of occupational pension capital for infrastructure and transformation assets is high, particularly over the medium to long term – but it is not currently embedded strategically in the question of how to make long-term-oriented private capital systematically available for transformation financing. Momentum around infrastructure assets as an asset class is strong, recent regulatory adjustments to the German Investment Ordinance (Anlageverordnung) are having a broadly positive effect, and individual actors are already in dialogue – though so far mostly on a project-by-project basis rather than structurally. A recurring keyword was “pooling” at the project, data and structural level as a key success factor for scaled mobilisation. Systematically providing project-information to foster matching capital provision and demand was identified as a further barrier today.

Five areas for action

• Project pipeline: Germany still lacks a central, transparent project overview – yet this would be a precondition for efficient risk assessment and expanded capital allocation. Experience from Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK can offer orientation here.

• Shared understanding: A mapping of the ecosystem – actor roles, interfaces, and dependencies between capital supply and demand – would help prioritise where action is needed and create more robust communication touchpoints.

• Regulatory coherence: The actor landscape in occupational pensions is multi-layered, and so are the regulatory requirements. Open questions remain, for instance around how infrastructure investments are treated within insurers’ security assets (Sicherungsvermögen) and in supervisory requirements.

• Investability case by case: For certain asset classes – newly built district heating networks, for example – regulatory incoherence and delayed cash-flow structures make financing harder, particularly in early phases.

• Learning from existing projects: Germany already has successfully implemented projects between occupational pension actors and the infrastructure side. What can be transferred from these to a scaled, standardised structure was a central point of discussion.

More to come

The workshop made clear that all sides stand to benefit from a more structured, better-scaled mobilisation of capital – and that key barriers exist which individual actors cannot resolve on their own. We look forward to continuing the exchange with E.ON and the participating partners from occupational pensions, infrastructure and finance in a follow-up workshop in the autumn.