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.
RWE is already considering whether to reduce its involvement in the proposed Galloper offshore wind farm off the Suffolk coast from 50% to 25% and said this sort of move was likely to become more common.
"I would never say never ... (but) there are more drivers to taking smaller stakes rather than larger ones," he said, adding that the company was now focusing on "value not volume".
The RWE executive, whose firm already owns major offshore wind farms such as Greater Gabbard and Gwynt y Mor, was unwilling to spell out the exact scale of the spending cuts, saying they would be made public on 4 March when the global renewable energy business - RWE Innogy - gives its annual briefing.
Last year, RWE announced it would be halving the group's overall clean-tech spending planned for 2014 from €1bn (£830m) to €500m and the new figure for this year will be lower still. In 2013, £500m of the total spend went to the UK but the figure is expected to fall to around £300m now, some believe.
The parent group is suffering under debts of €30bn on the back of plunging European electricity prices and the German government's decision to force the early closure of local nuclear power stations.
RWE admitted that continuing uncertainty and problems with the UK government's much-delayed Electricity Market Reform programme was also influencing the spending cutbacks.
Julia Lynch Williams, the UK managing director of RWE npower Renewables, who sits on a host of government working groups, said the electricity market reform programme "has got to be concluded soon" but also stressed that "we need some improvements" to its provisions.
Meanwhile, 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 shut down a coal-fired plant that it developed into biomass at Tilbury on the Thames due to a lack of expected government financial support.
The utility has also disposed of a £218m stake in a power supply business, its £350m stake in the Horizon nuclear power venture, and is searching for a buyer for its DEA oil exploration arm, operator of 13 productive gasfields in the North Sea.
The company says it wants to move further to a "capital light" position where it is bringing in a range of outside investors and partners to help with its many schemes.
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. RWE says these intiatives can be quite complicated but may be followed in the UK.
It is already exploring partnerships with community ownership in relation to new onshore wind farms in Wales and Scotland on Forestry Commission sites.
"It's certainly of interest to us," said RWE npower Renewables' Lynch Williams.
"We want to be a trusted partner," said Coffey, whose business is dropping the "npower" part of the name - something he insists is unassociated with that particular business's image problems.
In December, npower agreed to pay £3.5m to help vulnerable customers as a punishment imposed by the regulator for misleading consumers considering switching their energy provider.
theguardian.com
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.
RWE is already considering whether to reduce its involvement in the proposed Galloper offshore wind farm off the Suffolk coast from 50% to 25% and said this sort of move was likely to become more common.
"I would never say never ... (but) there are more drivers to taking smaller stakes rather than larger ones," he said, adding that the company was now focusing on "value not volume".
The RWE executive, whose firm already owns major offshore wind farms such as Greater Gabbard and Gwynt y Mor, was unwilling to spell out the exact scale of the spending cuts, saying they would be made public on 4 March when the global renewable energy business - RWE Innogy - gives its annual briefing.
Last year, RWE announced it would be halving the group's overall clean-tech spending planned for 2014 from €1bn (£830m) to €500m and the new figure for this year will be lower still. In 2013, £500m of the total spend went to the UK but the figure is expected to fall to around £300m now, some believe.
The parent group is suffering under debts of €30bn on the back of plunging European electricity prices and the German government's decision to force the early closure of local nuclear power stations.
RWE admitted that continuing uncertainty and problems with the UK government's much-delayed Electricity Market Reform programme was also influencing the spending cutbacks.
Julia Lynch Williams, the UK managing director of RWE npower Renewables, who sits on a host of government working groups, said the electricity market reform programme "has got to be concluded soon" but also stressed that "we need some improvements" to its provisions.
Meanwhile, 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 shut down a coal-fired plant that it developed into biomass at Tilbury on the Thames due to a lack of expected government financial support.
The utility has also disposed of a £218m stake in a power supply business, its £350m stake in the Horizon nuclear power venture, and is searching for a buyer for its DEA oil exploration arm, operator of 13 productive gasfields in the North Sea.
The company says it wants to move further to a "capital light" position where it is bringing in a range of outside investors and partners to help with its many schemes.
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. RWE says these intiatives can be quite complicated but may be followed in the UK.
It is already exploring partnerships with community ownership in relation to new onshore wind farms in Wales and Scotland on Forestry Commission sites.
"It's certainly of interest to us," said RWE npower Renewables' Lynch Williams.
"We want to be a trusted partner," said Coffey, whose business is dropping the "npower" part of the name - something he insists is unassociated with that particular business's image problems.
In December, npower agreed to pay £3.5m to help vulnerable customers as a punishment imposed by the regulator for misleading consumers considering switching their energy provider.
theguardian.com
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