Before founding Enpal, Mario cofounded Käuferportral, a platform connecting homeowners with trustworthy service providers who could fix a roof or replace a boiler, which was sold to ProSiebenSat.1 Group for €140m in January 2019. 

After that, Köhle was eager to tackle a bigger, more existential, problem: the climate crisis. At Käuferportal, he’d observed how homeowners wanted to switch their energy supply to solar, but the upfront cost and complexity of acquiring such a system was too much to justify.  

Enpal was founded to solve this problem. The company bought the solar systems outright, renting them back to customers for a fixed monthly fee, while handling the planning, installation and maintenance of the systems for customers.  

Enpal opened up access to renewable energy to millions of homeowners, while easing the friction that typically came with purchasing solar systems outright. Today, Enpal offers various financing options including rentals, loans via its EasyFlex programme, and direct purchase.  

“With Mario’s second company, he really had the ambition to build something big and important. It wasn’t about making more money, but about changing the world, and you could totally feel that” says Christian Saller, general partner at HV Capital.  

“There was never any doubt Mario would give everything. He has always been all in on the business.” 

In its nearly ten-year history, Enpal has endured the significant ups and downs of the global energy market that have tested the company’s resilience.  

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, demand for solar systems soared amid a broader European push to produce its own energy. “The challenge at that time was to have the right supply chain to get the solar panels mainly from China, while having capacity to install the systems,” says Christian. 

Not long after, during the second half of 2023, Enpal had to adapt again. As the cost of gas fell, consumers were less incentivised to seek cheaper alternatives and demand for solar dropped. At the same time, interest rates rose, pushing up the cost of the financing deals consumers typically use to buy panels. 

Enpal had always planned to expand its offering beyond solar, but the market pressure caused it to roll out heat pumps faster than planned. In 2025 alone, it installed over 10,000 heat pumps.  

Looking ahead, Enpal is focusing on expanding its product portfolio. That includes rolling out its virtual power plant (VPP), a cloud-based network connecting up energy sources like solar panels and home batteries using software, to a wider customer base, helping customers automate their energy usage and lower their energy bills. 

Beyond that, Enpal’s broader mission is to support society in adapting to the green energy transition. Enpal is working with municipal utilities and local authorities to provide energy solutions to customers who cannot connect to a central heating network.  

It’s also expanding its training academy to qualify more electricians at a time where Germany faces great labour shortages. 

“Enpal’s vision is to build one of the largest energy companies in the world in a sustainable and distributed way,” says Christian. “I’m very confident they will succeed.”