Speaker interview with Giorgia Epicoco, Director of Institutional Affairs & Public Policies, Italy, Zelestra.
Independent Power Producers (IPPs) are evolving beyond their traditional role as project developers. As they scale across Europe, many are becoming recognised B2B brands, influential voices in energy policy and trusted partners in the energy transition. In this interview, Giorgia Epicoco shares how the next generation of IPPs is building credibility, shaping industry conversations and using collaboration to create greater impact.
1. For those who may not know Zelestra, can you tell us a little about the company?
The best way to describe Zelestra is through its trajectory. We started in 2005 as one of Spain’s first pure solar developers. Today we’re a global, multi-technology renewable energy company backed by EQT. Vertically integrated across development, commercialization, construction and operation, and the numbers tell the story of the last two years: from around 1 GW of contracted portfolio at the end of 2023 to over 6.6 GW today, with ambitious targets to keep growing at pace.
Our business spans across the US the EU, and here is where Italy is showing its growth. We’ve recently signed three tolling agreements and two PPAs, secured 1.5 TWh through Energy Release 2.0 and contracts for nine projects in the FER X auctions — and, a moment I won’t forget, connected our first plant in the country. We’re now focused on reaching nearly 3 GW by the end of 2026. We are not defined by assets and gigawatts; we are different because we put the customer at the center of our model. We are not building projects and hoping for buyers; we start from the customer’s energy, and decarbonization needs and build backwards from there.
2. How are IPPs changing from project developers into recognised brands and trusted partners?
There’s a scene that captures it. Ten years ago, a developer walking into regional administration was essentially an applicant with a folder: you submitted your documents, you waited. Today, when we sit down, we’re a counterparty — the administrations around that table know that national energy targets simply cannot be met without companies like ours. The same shift has happened on the commercial side. The traditional IPP was invisible by design: you built, you sold electricity into the market, done. Now our customers are some of the largest companies in the world and the most sophisticated energy buyers – including hyperscalers, data centre operators, industrial groups and manufacturers. Companies with science-based targets, signing relationships of 10–15 years. They’re not buying megawatt-hours; they’re buying our ability to deliver their specific energy needs. To carry a project through a complex authorization process, to build it on time, with the community on board – and then to operate it over the long term.
And this is why I believe we’re at a pivotal moment: the IPP business model is carrying an unprecedented share of the energy transition, yet outside our industry almost nobody knows what an IPP actually is. Policymakers, media, communities, many still picture either a utility or a speculator. We develop, finance, build and operate; committed over decades; we anchor investment in communities. So our job is to explain that model clearly, and with stories people can relate to, so others do not misinterpret what we do. The evolution from invisible developer to recognised brand is a necessity: your permitting track record, your relationship with a mayor, the promise you kept in a village three years ago, these are critical to the customers we work with.
3. Why is it becoming more important for IPPs to have a strong brand and reputation?
Because almost every scarce resource in our industry is now allocated on trust. Land is contested, grid capacity is contested, permits are contested, and communities decide whether a project is welcome long before the authorization comes.
In Italy especially, where authorization involves many administrations and local stakeholders, the way you show up in a territory – present, transparent, keeping your word – is the difference between a procedure that flows and one that stalls. Reputation compounds, like interest. It also prices into everything else: lenders assess counterparty credibility, corporate offtakers run serious due diligence on who they sign with, and talented people choose employers they respect. So brand isn’t marketing decoration for an IPP, it is critical for supporting growth and delivering for customers.
4. What are the biggest challenges when communicating with policymakers?
Three, in my experience, and I’ll tell them the way I’ve lived them.
The first is time. Our projects live on five-to-ten-year development cycles; political attention often runs on much shorter ones. Explaining why regulatory stability may matter more than any single incentive is a translation exercise you need to do constantly.
The second is complexity. Energy regulation is genuinely technical – auction design, grid connection rules, agrivoltaic requirements – and the temptation to simplify is dangerous: oversimplify once, and you lose credibility with exactly the technical offices that draft and apply the rules.
The third is the one I care most about: showing up as part of the solution, not as a lobby with a wish list. The conversations that move things are the ones where we arrive with a story from the ground or for the community. Policymakers are navigating real tensions between costs, land use and energy security. The operators who acknowledge that complexity, who bring evidence instead of complaints, are the ones who earn a seat at the table.
5. If you could give one piece of advice to communications and marketing professionals in the energy sector, what would it be?
Learn the substance and then learn to tell it. In this industry, communication credibility is inseparable from technical credibility. You cannot tell the story of an agrivoltaic project or a grid connection if you don’t genuinely understand how it works; journalists, mayors, ministries and corporate buyers detect superficiality. So, sit with the engineers, the permitting teams, the legal counsel. Walk the project sites, there’s no substitute for having stood in the field you’re describing.
The best people in this sector are translators: they can follow a highly technical regulatory discussion in the morning and render it faithfully for a village assembly or a CEO in the afternoon, without losing the truth of it. And resist generic transition rhetoric. Everyone says “sustainable,” “green,” “committed” those words have stopped meaning anything. What builds trust is specificity: real projects, real numbers, real communities, a farmer whose land now produces both wheat and electricity. Concrete beats inspirational.