Guardian: “RWE, one of Britain’s biggest renewable energy investors, is planning to significantly scale back its spending in the UK and expects to sell off wind farms and a major biomass plant.”
“Employees, local communities and regional councils are to be offered stakes in RWE projects as the company retreats in the face of its own huge debts, a plunging share price, and uncertain government policies.
RWE, whose npower retail arm is one of the UK’s big six power suppliers, has already shelved what would have been one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, the Atlantic Array, among other businesses.
Paul Coffey, the chief operating officer of RWE npower Renewables, said his company was still committed to a pipeline of green power projects in Britain but admitted the era of his German-owned company taking majority stakes in future big offshore wind farms was probably over.
….the company expects to sell half of its 700MW of onshore wind development pipeline in the next few years and is considering an option to sell its £200m Markinch biomass plant in Fife, Scotland, which is just about to come online. It is claimed to be the largest biomass combined heat and power plant in the UK.
….RWE has already undertaken trials in Germany of selling stakes in the Jüchen onshore wind project, located in North Rhine-Westphalia, to its own staff and even local authorities.”
Future Today
