The Center for American Progress reports
On [November 30], Germany's biggest utility E.ON announced plans to split into two companies and focus on renewables in a major shift that could be an indicator of broader changes to come across the utility sector. E.ON will spin off its nuclear, oil, coal, and gas operations in an effort to confront a drastically altered energy market, especially under the pressure of Germany's Energiewende—the country's move away from nuclear to renewables. The company told shareholders that it will place "a particular emphasis on expanding its wind business in Europe and in other selected target markets," and that it will also "strengthen its solar business."
E.ON will also focus on smart grids and distributed generation in an effort to improve energy efficiency and increase customer engagement and opportunity.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 03 2014, @06:56PM
Cool. Let the oil and coal companies rot and die.
(Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday December 03 2014, @07:55PM
And then get buried, and slowly break down into rough complex hydrocarbons over the course of hundreds of millions of years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 03 2014, @09:30PM
Spun off is not dead... they will be sold for profit and whoever buys them will continue to operate them to recoup their cost of acquisition.
The "name" will shift to clean energy, but the physical coal and oil plants aren't going anywhere.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 03 2014, @07:03PM
I apologize that I don't have the link at the moment, but there was already evidence two years ago that the existing presence of solar in Germany had chopped off the profitable section of the demand curve for German utilities. The highest spot-rates for electricity in a 24-hr cycle coincide with the highest production rates for solar and alt-energy. It's not entirely surprising that a utility should follow market trends.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday December 03 2014, @07:27PM
Don't believe everything you read about solar and wind in Germany. The press there is high on german aggrandizement and a little weak on the truth.
I suggest you do your own research where you will find that Germany is ramping up coal use after becoming frightened of nuclear power.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-19/rising-german-coal-use-imperils-european-emissions-deal.html [bloomberg.com]
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/energy-revolution-spells-doom-german-village-27228661 [go.com]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e6470600-77bf-11e3-807e-00144feabdc0.html [ft.com]
Germany has lately stalled on its march to all renewable energy, as the hard truth has hit home, as we discussed earlier here on SN, even Google is re-thinking its renewables only approach.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-googles-green-efforts-1417123995 [wsj.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:09AM
Don't believe everything you read. Germany is reducing the number of coal plants it has. The only reason new ones are being built is to replace old ones that are worn out with newer ones, and the new ones are unlikely to ever make a profit now.
http://energytransition.de/2013/04/germany-builds-minus-six-coal-plants-after-nuclear-phaseout/ [energytransition.de]
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by quitte on Wednesday December 03 2014, @07:04PM
bailout?
If this works out it's all the better. But somehow this looks like a wooden horse to me.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 03 2014, @08:06PM
They're just putting future losses into a nominally independent company that then will have to be bailed out by the government when nuclear/coal power plants that have long been overdue for decommissioning will finally be taken off the net.
After already having been reimbursed for those expenses by the same government of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:03AM
Why is that post marked as troll? This is a reasonable suspicion (indeed, it's probably the nuclear plants which they most urgently wanted to get rid of). The only thing the parent does wrong is to state it as fact rather than as the suspicion it is. However given that from the nature of the claim it is clear anyway that it's only a suspicion (only insiders can know the real reason, and if it were based on insider information the parent would have said so).
(I'm a different AC, just in case you think that I'm just complaining about negative moderation of my own post).
(Score: 1) by Rich on Thursday December 04 2014, @03:21AM
I wonder how extensive their venture into "distributed generation" will be. A large percentage of German houses is heated by natgas. Putting generators in those heaters would not only smoothly fill the gap of solar generation in winter months, it would also almost double the efficency of primary energy usage for electricity generation. The best CCPPs go to about 60% of heat converted into electricity, but even with a silly low conversion rate, decentralized generators would still get close to 100% out of the primary, because the remaining heat is needed for heating the houses (and not blown off through a cooling tower).
There was/is a semi-promising startup called "Lichtblick" which bought engines from Volkswagen for that purpose, but this deal broke down early in 2014. Semi-promising, because the Lichtblick units cost around 20K EUR, while the average central heating unit runs for about 2K. However, I don't see why it should be impossible to integrate some generator into such a unit for another thousand EUR. Small Honda generators with 2kW run for about that price alone. Now, those as such would certainly be too unreliable, but some kind of stirling motor is certainly feasible.
Lichtblick still does decentralized management and I wouldn't be surprised if the "trunk"-E.on would buy the whole shop now, because that's pretty much the market they're after nationally, and they need a quick start. Also, E.on certainly would have the resources to come up with a solution as mentioned above.
In the past I've been wondering why the path hadn't been seriously pursued; I only could guess that it was a political issue to protect the big utilities. But with E.on now in the new game, things might change.
To very coarsly run the numbers: A house with a common 24kW heater might blow out 50 MWh of heat per year with a 5K gas bill. Assuming 20% generation, there are 10 MWh generated (for an extra 1K). That'd be 10 cent per kWh; or whatever the gas costs (it's in the 6-10 cent bracket, and billed per kWh). If all self-consumed, that would save 15 cent per kWh over the grid, so the savings in one year would be around 1500 EUR. Pretty quick ROI for the simple case. If one owns the grid and can influence gas pricing (the Russkies get between 1 and 3 cents, iirc), and maybe get into a position to control all those units remotely, there might be serious profit (but also a risk of sacrificing parts of the existing utilities). Ballpark calculation: 10M (probably high) houses as described * 4.8kW -> 48GW out of 70GW peak / 40 GW base load.