RWE cuts losses / "Good bad diesel"

The growth of renewables, while slowed, continues throughout Europe and is putting pressure on the price of electricity, Frank-Thomas Wenzel writes in Frankfurter Rundschau. What could happen is a stronger reduction of overcapacity, such as the large-scale closure of power stations. Wenzel likens the current situation to a poker game in which players wait in anticipation for the other to fold first and shut down power plants. Some in the industry suspect a coordinated action could take place following the next federal elections, with the backing of the government, that would result in power plant closures. 

E.ON’s path to a new energy age is paved in red ink, Helmut Bünder writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. E.ON’s initial public offering of its conventional energy unit Uniper in September could decide whether the company continues to bleed. Uniper write-downs have cost E.ON billions and without a capital increase it cannot afford its mandatory payments to the state-administered fund to finance nuclear waste storage. The company is also facing more troubles due to low interest rates, which are forcing it to increase its pension provisions.

The German environment ministry’s move to stop plans to make it easier to ban diesel cars from cities is a good thing, Carsten Knop writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Knop argues that the “blue badge” plan would force nearly all existing diesel cars off city roads. He points out that while diesel cars emit nitrogen dioxide, they also emit far less carbon dioxide that gasoline-powered cars. The different objectives must be more reasonably weighed against one another than they were in the debate about manipulated emissions, he adds.