"Solid" innogy profits/ Chancellery head against national climate aims
Financial Times
Partly due to weak winds last year, earnings at RWE renewables spin-off innogy fell 7 percent to 4.2 billion euros in 2016, the company's first fiscal year as an independent company, reports Guy Chazan for the Financial Times. Revenues dropped four percent to 43.6 billion euros. Earnings were down 18 per cent year-on-year in innogy’s renewables division, because “low wind levels” put a break on power generation.
Read the news article in English here.
Find the innogy press release in English here.
Find background on RWE’s split in the factsheet RWE’s plans for new renewables subsidiary.
Handelsblatt
Innogy launches with “solid profits,” in contrast to parent company RWE, writes Jürgen Flauger in the Handelsblatt. He calls Peter Terium’s switch from RWE to innogy CEO a “successful changeover,” saying that “In 2017, Terium even wants to increase earnings significantly.”
Read the article in German here.
Die Welt
The chief of Angela Merkel's chancellery, Peter Altmaier, wants ambitious EU and international goals for climate protection, instead of special national targets. “I am completely convinced that the path of national targets is wrong,” he told a meeting of the Christian Democrats' (CDU) Economic Council, reports Daniel Wetzel in Die Welt. In a message on Twitter, Altmaier indicated that he was stating his personal opinion.
Read the article in German here and Altmaier’s tweet in German here.
For background read the CLEW factsheet Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions and climate targets.
The Economic Council (of the CDU)
Special national targets for climate protection are “counterproductive” and should be abolished, writes the Economic Council of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in a concept paper on the EU energy market. The EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) should be the central instrument to define a CO₂ “level playing field” price signal, it said. Existing national targets should be limited to the non-ETS sectors heating and transport. The council calls for industry exemptions “at least as long as there’s no common G20 CO₂ price level.”
Find the concept paper in German here.
For background read the CLEW factsheet Understanding the European Union’s Emissions Trading System.
EurActiv
The dispute about the decision to split the German-Austrian common power price zone shows the difficulties of designing a common EU energy market in light of missing grid infrastructure, writes Paul Hodgson for EurActiv. Trans-border power trade, as well as that from Germany’s north to its south, is often bigger than the direct power lines allow for, causing so-called loop flows through neighbouring countries. The EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER)’s appeals board is due to rule on Austria’s objection to the split by 17 March.
Read the article in German here.
For background read the CLEW news digest article German regulator announces preparations to terminate common power zone with Austria and the CLEW articles Loop flows: Why is wind power from northern Germany putting east European grids under pressure? and Europe's largest electricity market set to split.
Frankfurter Rundschau
Municipal utilities say Germany’s four transmission grid operators (TSO) are establishing a new “energy oligopoly”, because of their request to construct and also operate “network stability” gas power plants in southern Germany, writes Frank-Thomas Wenzel for Frankfurter Rundschau. The country’s grid operation and power production are usually unbundled and local utilities fear they will lose revenues to TSOs, writes Wenzel. Grid operators want to build the new power plants to keep the grid stable through re-dispatch measures when Germany’s last nuclear power plants go offline by 2022. They say these facilities would not be part of the regular power market and only run in exceptional situations.
Read the article in German here.
For background read the CLEW factsheet Re-dispatch costs in the German power grid.
