Its venture group, Octopus Energy Development Partnership (OEDP) has invested in renewables specialist Nexta Capital Partners, and is creating a joint project with the Milan-based group.

The new venture aims to build 1.1GW of new onshore wind, solar farms and energy storage in the south of Italy by 2025.

This will power 1.2m homes, while potentially avoiding a potential 950,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

This is the equivalent of removing over 500,000 petrol cars and planting over 4.6m trees.

The recently launched €220m OEDP invests in early stages of building green power.

OEDP is providing funding to Nexta who will secure land, grid connections, planning permission and local community engagement to get renewable projects to the ready-to-build stage.

Nexta was founded in 2015, developing renewable energy projects in Italy.

Octopus backs Italy’s plans to go green to ease Russian reliance

Italy depends on Russia for around 25 percent of its imported gas and the Government is aiming to reduce its reliance through renewable developments.

In the past year, regulations have been passed to unblock bottlenecks in permitting renewable projects and speed up green energy deployment in Italy.

Zoisa North-Bond, chief executive of Octopus Energy Generation, said: “Building more new green energy will help reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels and drive down energy bills. Onshore wind and solar are some of the cheapest forms of energy – and Italy can generate it right on their soil. To avoid a repeat of the energy crisis, it’s essential we turbocharge the creation of new renewable energy and shift to a low carbon energy system.”

Fabrizio Caputo, co-founder and managing director of Nexta, said: “The partnership with Octopus represents a further step towards the consolidation of our growth objectives within the renewable energy industry. We aim to play a leading role with Octopus in the energy transition process.”

This follows Octopus Energy Italy launching its energy supplier brand in Italy in June 2022, after acquiring SATO Luce e Gas in November 2022.

Octopus Energy Generation is one of Europe’s largest renewables investors, managing green energy assets worth £4.4bn.

It previously invested in the Italian renewables market in 2017 to build 173 MW of solar farms in Lazio and Sardinia, sold in February 2021.