Porsche creates 1,400 jobs in e-mobility / 'Commerzbank exits coal'
Porsche
German sports cars manufacturer Porsche AG plans to recruit more than 1,400 new employees in the Stuttgart region to develop and produce the ‘Mission E’, the company’s first all-electric sports car. "We are in direct competition with other automakers and suppliers and IT firms in our global search for talented experts,” said Andreas Haffner, member of the Porsche AG Executive Board, according to a press release. In a “war for talents”, Porsche seeks experts in the fields of digitalisation, e-mobility, smart mobility and vehicle connectivity, production planners familiar with Factory 4.0 and digital production and IT specialists. In total, the sports car manufacturer employed 26,200 people at the end of June 2016. Porsche plans for the ‘Mission E’ to go into production in Zuffenhausen, Germany at the end of the decade.
Read the press release in English here.
Klimaretter.info
German Commerzbank has decided to stop financing new coal mining projects and coal power plants, writes Klimaretter.info. According to new internal regulations (fully enacted from 1 August 2016), Commerzbank also "expects German clients in the energy supply sector to reduce the share of power generated through coal" to under 30 percent by 2021. Modernising existing power plants would continue to be possible, but were subject to individual examination, writes Klimaretter.info.
Read the article in German here.
Read a CLEW interview with Rüdiger Senft, Head of Corporate Responsibility at Commerzbank.
Focus-Money
With a share price increase of 36 percent, RWE’s shares come in second place of the top stocks in Germany’s benchmark DAX index this year. This is despite the utility’s struggle after Germany’s decision to phase-out nuclear power and the rise of renewables, writes Focus-Money. The reason was RWE’s decision to separate its renewable business from the ailing fossil fuel generation into a new subsidiary to be called ‘Innogy’, according to the article. “The stock market launch of Innogy changes everything. This way, there are many good arguments for a significantly better rating,” said Peter Crampton, energy expert at the investment bank Macquarie.
Read a CLEW factsheet about RWE’s plans for new renewable subsidiary.
KfW Research
The Energiewende cannot succeed without a heating transition, because the heat market is the most important final energy consumption sector in Germany, writes the government-owned financing institution KfW’s research division in a paper. However, the potential of the sector was “not sufficiently exploited by the relevant stakeholders because of numerous obstacles – including information deficits, financial restrictions or incomplete internalisation of the external environmental costs of fossil energy sources”, write the authors. They call on policymakers to stimulate the necessary investments through the creation of targeted incentives. Heating accounted for more than half (54 percent) of final energy consumption and the sector was responsible for around 26 percent of Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the paper.
Read the paper in English here.
Tagesspiegel
With more and more renewables needed, the conflict between climate and nature protection grows - and simply “saving energy” will not be sufficient, writes Ralf Nestler in an opinion piece for Tagesspiegel. “Already, the limit of what can be asked of the landscape and the population in terms of wind and solar parks seems to have been reached,” writes Nestler. Issues like the danger of birds’ collisions with wind turbines make it difficult for associations to succeed in the balancing act between climate and nature protection. With Germany already being named the world leader in energy efficiency, the call to simply save energy was not a sufficient solution, writes Nestler.
Read the article in German here.
SolarWorld / Reuters
A single judge granted supplier Hemlock Semiconductor Corp's claim for damages amounting to 585 million US dollars plus interests of 208 million US dollars in the litigation with SolarWorld, says SolarWorld in an ad-hoc announcement. “In spite of this judgment in the first instance, SolarWorld AG continues to assume that Hemlock will not be able to enforce any claims in Germany,” the company says, adding that it will appeal the US court decision. The news agency Reuters writes that SolarWorld had warned in its annual report that a judicial sentencing to pay the demanded sum would threaten the continued existence of the company.
Find Solarword’s ad-hoc announcement from 27 July 2016 in English here.
Read SolarWorld’s annual report 2015 (relevant p. 76) in English here.
