RWE has raised its global green electricity investment goal to €55bn for the remainder of the decade, as the German energy giant today ramped up its renewables capacity goal to 65GW by 2030, up from around 35GW today.
Thanks to “significant financial headroom” achieved through strong earnings growth, the company said it planned to accelerate its green energy ambitions throughout the 2020s.
Presenting its updated investment strategy in London today, the company said it had already invested €20bn in renewables and clean energy technologies since 2021, but that by further increasing its investment plans it expected to grow its earnings to more than €9bn by 2030.
More than half of the €55bn total is planned in Europe, with Germany set for €11bn investment from 2024 to 2030 and €8bn earmarked for the UK. The USA is also a major focus for the company, with €20bn set aside for future clean energy investments through to the end of the decade, it said.
RWE said the spending would be “widely spread” across technologies, with 40 per cent earmarked for its onshore wind and solar business. It has set a goal of ramping up onshore wind capacity worldwide to 14GW by 2030, and expanding solar to 16GW by the same date.
Over a third of the total planned investment will be used to expand its offshore wind capacity to 10GW in 2030, up from 3.3GW today, while 25 per cent is set to go towards developing battery storage, flexible generation, and hydrogen projects, it said.
The company is targeting 6GW of battery storage capacity by 2030, up from 500MW today, in addition to at least 3GW of “hydrogen-ready” gas-fired power plans ant 2GW of green hydrogen production capacity via electrolysers by the same date.
“Thanks to our significant financial headroom, our attractive project pipeline and our extensive expertise, we are in an excellent position to continue to accelerate our transformation, even in the current challenging environment,” said RWE’s CEO Markus Krebber.
“In the coming years up to 2030, we want to invest €55bn worldwide in renewable energy, batteries, flexible generation and hydrogen projects. We are growing green and increasing our earnings while decarbonising our portfolio even faster – in line with the 1.5C pathway and our goal of becoming net zero by 2040.”
Since 2021, RWE has increased its total global green energy portfolio from 9GW to 35GW, and it currently has more than 100 projects under construction in 10 countries, comprising 7.8GW of additional capacity.
The firm said it had an “extensive” pipeline of planned projects totalling more than 100GW of capacity, which it said would allow it to prioritise investments within its pipeline to secure “the most attractive risk-return profile”.
Michael Müller, chief financial officer at the company, said he expected net income to grow by an average of 12 per cent in 2020s, amounting to €3bn in 2030, in addition to doubling its shareholder dividend payouts to 10 per cent each year.
“Our ambitious Growing Green targets reflect RWE’s financial strength and emphasise once again that we are growing profitably,” he said. “Our investment and growth programme is fully financed until 2030. We cover around 80 per cent of our financial requirements from the strong cash flow of our profitable operating business. Thanks to our attractive investment grade rating, we also have access to the debt capital market at all times.”
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