German utility giant E.ON has today announced plans to launch of a green energy investment strategy to lead the firm into the “new energy world”.
The announcement came as part of E.ON’s half year results, which saw the utility largely recover from its “extraordinarily weak” first quarter to boost earnings growth 25 per cent in the three months to June 2017 and cut its debt faster than expected.
The strong performance prompted the utility to reaffirm its earnings expectations for full-year 2017 and trail new investment and dividend strategies for 2018, including a new plan to focus on the “new energy world”.
E.ON CEO Johannes Teyssen said he would reveal the full strategy at the release of the company’s 2017 full year results next Spring. But he suggested it would include investment in “competitive renewables” and energy efficiency.
“We’ll focus on our strong customer base and its interests. We offer our customers more efficient networks, new energy solutions, and competitive renewables,” he said in a statement. “Our sustainable business models will deliver increasing earnings, which will benefit our investors as well.”
E.ON added it expects 2017 earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to fall between €2.8bn and €3.1bn, in line with original forecasts.
Last year E.ON spun off its fossil fuel business Uniper into a separate entity, leaving it free to focus on cleaner sources of generation and energy-related services. Since then it has focused on boosting its green power offering, including rolling out electric vehicle charge points in homes and expanding access to clean energy tariffs through a partnership with supermarket retailer Lidl.
It has targeted much of its focus on the solar market, introducing the Aura battery storage system and E.ON Solar Cloud for solar power storage, and teaming up with Google on Project Sunroof to help consumers identify the solar potential of their rooftops.
As a result, E.ON said demand for its solar solutions has increased six-fold in Germany over the course of a year.
Source: businessgreen.com
