Uniper ahead of IPO / Environment minister's manifesto
The Economist
When RWE and E.ON both split their their fossil fuel-based and their new energy technology businesses into separate companties, it was evidence that the German Energiewende “has dealt a huge jolt to the business model of what were once two of Europe’s most highly regarded utilities,” writes The Economist. There are “plenty have reservations about the coming [stock market] listings” of RWE’s Innogy and E.ON’s Uniper, according to The Economist. “[E.ON’s] Mr Teyssen prefers to see his company not as a dinosaur fighting extinction, but as a bird—the descendant of a dinosaur—flying into a bright future. Provided, that is, it doesn’t crash into a power pylon,” the magazine writes.
Read the article in English here.
Find background information in the CLEW factsheets E.ON shareholders ratify energy giant's split and RWE’s plans for new renewable subsidiary.
Wirtschaftswoche
E.ON subsidiary Uniper will debut on the stock exchange on 12 September and analysts say the share may see some ups and downs, due to pressures on the utility’s coal, gas and hydro power business, according to an article in Wirtschaftswoche. The share could be interesting for investors who are willing to take a risk, but who like a good dividend, writes the magazine.
Read a CLEW factsheet about E.ON here.
Handelsblatt
Environment minister Barbara Hendricks wants to have her Climate Action Plan 2050 approved before the climate conference in Morocco in November, “to send a signal to the global community”, she writes in a guest commentary in the Handelsblatt. “What astonishes me is an apparently still widespread misbelief that climate protection requires changes all over the world, but not from us,” Hendricks writes. While she says that “by mid-century”, German power must be generated fully through renewables, Hendricks adds that her ministry omitted a date for a German coal exit from the current draft of the climate plan to “leave no man behind” and plan the process carefully, including the views and needs of all parties concerned.
Read the CLEW factsheet Germany's trimmed-down Climate Action Plan and the CLEW article Ministry avoids concrete targets in weakened Climate Action Plan for background.
Kölner Stadtanzeiger
The Integrated Environment Programme 2030 environment minister Barbara Hendricks published yesterday reads in part like her political legacy and in part like a self-confident settling of accounts with some of her cabinet colleagues, writes Thorsten Knuf in an article for Kölner Stadtanzeiger. For instance, while a date for a coal exit for Germany was omitted from Hendricks’ Climate Action Plan 2050, she now says in her environment programme: “The environment ministry will support that electricity generation based on coal be ended in time before 2050 in a wide dialogue with all stakeholders.”
Read the article in German here.
University of St. Gallen
About one in two Germans would consider investing in community renewable energy projects, a representative survey of 1,990 participants by Swiss University of St. Gallen found. While solar PV and wind power projects are the preferred types, investment volumes vary: 19 percent of participants willing to invest could imagine devoting 10,000 euros, 29 percent would spend as much as 5,000 euros and about a third would invest up to 1,000 euros. “As concerns the project location, survey participants indicate a slight preference for projects in their own neighbourhood compared to nation-wide projects. This may indicate that citizen participation can invert the much discussed "Not in my backyard" (NIMBY) theory to its opposite: "Please in my backyard" (PIMBY),” University of St. Gallen writes in a press release.
Read the press release in English here.
Also take a look at the CLEW factsheet Polls reveal citizens' support for Energiewende.
Center of Automotive Management (CAM) / Focus Online
The market for e-cars is growing much slower in Germany than in other countries like China, according to a study by Center of Automotive Management (CAM), writes Focus Online. In the first eight months of 2016, China sold 240,000 new e-cars, 123 percent more than in the same period in 2015, raising their market share to 1.7 percent, according to CAM. In Germany, sales only rose by 8 percent, at 14,013, in the period, raising their market share to 0.6 percent. The story notes that in China there are considerably fewer cars per 1000 inhabitants, which means many first-owners in China are opting for electric cars.
Read the article in German here and find the study for purchase here.
Wirtschaftswoche
Already densely populated by windmills, and with more in the pipeline, some districts in northern Germany are pushing back against wind power investors and laws, writes Angela Schmid in WirtschaftsWoche. Municipal politicians in Schleswig-Holstein are fighting plans to expand wind at state level, demanding to have more land designated as nature preserves.
Read the article in German here.
