FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) – German utility EnBW is considering spending 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on a planned expansion of gas-fired power plants in its home country, which the current government has said is needed to help in the transition towards renewables.
Current plans envisage the installation of 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of additional gas-fired power plant capacity, provided the regulatory framework under EU taxonomy rules makes such a move possible.
“We are convinced that these power plants are absolutely necessary for energy supply. Somebody has to build them,” Georg Stamatelopoulos, EnBW’s board member in charge of operation, told Reuters.
This, he said, would include retrofits of legacy coal-fired power plants to convert them to gas plants and entail total investments of around 1.5 billion euros, adding the company was already developing plans for its sites.
Stamatelopoulos said EnBW was open to partners in this push, which could include a further 600 megawatt in the 2030s.
Including reserve capacity, EnBW – which plans to double its onshore and offshore and triple its solar by 2025 – has around 1.2 GW worth of gas-plants today.
Gas-fired power plants will be the main technology to help Europe’s largest economy manage a transition to renewable energy sources at a time when two key baseload sources – nuclear and coal – are being phased out.
Estimates over how many gas-fired power plants are needed in Germany by the end of the decade range from anywhere between 10 GW and 40 GW.
He said recent proposed changes to EU taxonomy rules, under which gas and nuclear power will likely get a ‘green’ label to provide better access to funding, went into the right direction.
“It’s an important step to mobilise private investment to achieve the EU climate protection targets,” Stamatelopoulos said.
($1 = 0.8715 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Miranda Murray)
