ESSEN (dpa-AFX) – RWE Energy Group believes that it is making good progress in building a sustainable energy system. “We currently have 7.2 gigawatts of projects under construction,” Chief Financial Officer Michael Müller said in Essen on Thursday. Work on two large offshore wind farms in Denmark and the UK and on 17 onshore and 36 solar projects is progressing well. In addition, there were 15 battery power stations, he said. “We will continue to invest in the energy transition in the second half of the year,” Mueller announced. For comparison: the Datteln IV coal-fired power station has a capacity of more than one gigawatt.
RWE invested nine billion euros in the first half of the year. More than two-thirds of that amount went into the acquisition of US solar company Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses. Generation capacity grew by a total of 5.1 gigawatts in the first half of the year. This increased RWE’s sustainable portfolio to 15.8 GW. “We were able to generate about 20 percent more electricity from wind and solar than in the same period last year, despite the fact that wind levels in much of Europe and the United States were below average,” Mueller said.
Markus Krepper, CEO of RWE, has expressed concern about the expansion of offshore wind power. “We are currently going through a challenging phase in the global offshore business,” he said. Inflation and strained supply chains have caused prices for offshore turbines to skyrocket. In recent weeks, he said, initial projects in Europe and the United States have been halted due to rising costs. He said this is not good news for the global energy transition. “This is the worst-case scenario for an energy transition: when large projects that have already been awarded don’t materialize as planned.”
He emphasized that RWE is carrying out its offshore projects according to plan. In this context, he reported on projects in Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland and the United States that RWE is pushing forward.
In recent months, the company’s daily business from Essen has been going smoothly: at the end of July, RWE presented preliminary figures for the first half of the year and also increased its annual targets against this background. High profits in electricity generation from water, biomass and gas in particular have caused a tailwind in recent months. In addition, energy trading went better than expected. / tob/DP/mis
