By Christoph Steitz and Tom K\u00e4ckenhoff<\/p>\n
FRANKFURT\/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) -Uniper will invest 5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) through 2030, mainly in renewables and gas-fired power plants, the German utility said on Thursday, in a strategy update that reflects more sober expectations for green energy markets.<\/p>\n
The state-owned utility last year slowed down an initial plan of investing 8 billion euros in its transformation by 2030, delaying that target to the early 2030s over falling returns on renewable projects and a delay in the development of hydrogen markets. It confirmed that timeline on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Those challenges have led several European utilities, including larger German peer RWE, to come under pressure from investors to review their capital allocations, forcing them to trim spending plans.<\/p>\n
“The regulatory and geopolitical environment is challenging,” Uniper CEO Michael Lewis said, citing delays to German government plans to build new gas-fired power plants as well as the slow hydrogen ramp-up.<\/p>\n
“We will prioritize investments that deliver stable, regulated, or contracted cash flows to increase earnings predictability and reduce our merchant exposure going forward,” he told analysts after presenting first-half results.<\/p>\n
Most of the 5 billion euros will be spent on expanding Uniper’s renewable and gas-fired power plant portfolio, the group said, adding it plans to have 15-20 gigawatts of generation capacity by 2030.<\/p>\n
At least half of that capacity is expected to be green, Uniper said, adding this would cover sources such as solar, wind and hydro, but also nuclear and new gas-fired power plants that can eventually run carbon neutral via green hydrogen or carbon capture.<\/p>\n
The company, which was bailed out by Berlin in 2022 during Europe’s energy crisis, also said it plans to expand its liquefied natural gas portfolio to 250-300 terawatt hours a year over the medium term.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8570 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff. Additional reporting by Vera Eckert. Editing by Kirsti Knolle, Mark Potter and Jan Harvey)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Christoph Steitz and Tom K\u00e4ckenhoff FRANKFURT\/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) -Uniper will invest 5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) through 2030,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,5373,117602,117603],"class_list":{"0":"post-326266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-green-energy","12":"tag-power-plants","13":"tag-uniper"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114989755629915388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}