German energy companies are short of as much as 30 billion euros ($34 billion) of the money they need to set aside to build a safe disposal site for nuclear waste as part of the country's exit from nuclear power, Spiegel Online reported on Monday.
E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall are due to switch off their nuclear plants by a 2022 deadline set by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
ESSEN, Germany, March 10 (Reuters) - A sale of uranium enrichment company Urenco won't happen before the second half of 2015, RWE Chief Executive Peter Terium said, adding that a disposal could even take longer than that.
RWE and peer E.ON jointly hold one third of Urenco's shares, with the Dutch and British governments each owning a third, too.
Terium said the stake in Urenco was the last major item on the company's list of disposals.
Germany’s push toward renewable energy is causing so many drops and surges from wind and solar power that more utilities than ever are receiving money from the grids to help stabilize the country’s electricity network.
Twenty power companies including Germany’s biggest utilities, EON SE and RWE AG, now get fees for pledging to add or cut electricity within seconds to keep the power system stable, double the number in September, according to data from the nation’s four grid operators. Utilities that sign up to the 800 million-euro ($1.1 billion) balancing market can be paid as much as 400 times wholesale electricity prices, the data show.
Embattled E.ON and RWE turn to the government and the courts for help
Jun 7th 2014, BERLIN - RECENT years have brought little but bad news for Germany’s power generators. Having overinvested in gas- and coal-fired plants before the financial crisis, the two largest, E.ON and RWE, ended up with excess capacity in the ensuing downturn—just as lavish subsidies to wind- and solar-power producers were bringing a host of new competitors to the market. After the nuclear accident at Fukushima in Japan in 2011, the German government decided that all nuclear plants in the country must close by 2022, bringing forward the huge costs of decommissioning them. To cap it all, ever more industrial consumers of electricity have gone “off the grid”, generating their own power. Shares in the two power giants have fallen by almost half in the past five years, whereas Germany’s DAX stockmarket index has almost doubled in that time (see chart).
Germany’s nuclear industry is fighting Berlin over a plan to transfer the risks of shutting down facilities to a publicly owned foundation that would act as a “bad bank”.
The power companies are engaged in a decommissioning exercise with an estimated cost of more than €30bn after Berlin announced an accelerated exit from nuclear energy following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The work includes demolishing nuclear plants and disposing of radioactive waste.
Energy group Delta, which is still in the hands of Zeeland local authorities, has hired merchant bank Morgan Stanley to investigate a potential merger or sale, the Financieele Dagblad says on Wednesday.
'We are taking a broad approach,' a spokesman told the paper. 'We can continue as an independent, merge or be sold off, and that could involve an international company.'
FRANKFURT/AMSTERDAM, March 27 (Reuters) - Dutch nuclear reactor Borssele has been given permission to operate up to 2033, though the approval can still be contested, Dutch and German stakeholders said on Wednesday.
Started in 1973, the 500 megawatt plant is one of the oldest reactors in Europe. It is 70 percent owned by Dutch generator Delta, in turn owned by Dutch provincial authorities, and 30 percent by German utility RWE.
THE boss of one of Britain’s biggest energy giants has blasted Government plans to encourage new nuclear plants.
Paul Massara, chief executive of RWE npower, said contracts lasting up to a rumoured 35 years, to guarantee generators a minimum price for electricity, would be “wrong”.
Ministers are being pressured to offer lengthy terms to get firms to commit to the vast cost of building nuclear power stations.
Bulgaria's Parliament confirmed Wednesday the country's decision to abandon the Belene nuclear power plant project.
The vote was prompted by a recent referendum on the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the country.
Under the law, the recent referendum results imposed for the Belene NPP to be put back on the Parliament's agenda, as voter turnout slightly exceeded 20%. 61% of the voters said "yes" to the construction of a new nuclear power plant; 39% cast a "no" ballot.
RWE npower, one of the big six power suppliers, has warned ministers not to seal a long-term subsidy deal with the nuclear industry behind the backs of consumers and saddle them with "unnecessarily high bills" for the next 40 years.
The warning from Paul Massara, RWE UK's new chief executive, comes as the Guardian can reveal that up to 15 private sector executives with links to the atomic sector have been seconded to government departments or other public sector roles.
