According to a report by Bloomberg today, Enel Green Power SpA, a unit of Italy’s biggest utility, is to earmark €6.4 billion for investments on wind, solar and other renewable energy plants between now and 2015.
Citing Enel Green Power’s CEO, Francesco Starace, who was talking at a conference in Dubai today, Bloomberg reported that Enel Green Power has allocated around €1 billion alone for spending on solar plants and the Catania panel factory in Italy.
Enel Green Power plans to expand production in Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Starace said, adding that the company may expand to North Africa and the Middle East after 2015.
In Germany, meanwhile, Bloomberg writes that the country’s third-largest utility, EnBW, is to invest close to €8 billion on renewable energy to make up for the shortfall left as Germany phases out atomic energy.
In a press release handed to reporters ahead of the company’s annual general meeting in the German city of Karlsruhe, Hans-Peter Villis, EnBW’s chief executive officer, said EnBW will add about 3 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity to its 3.1 gigawatts over the next 10 years.
“We recognise that after the events in Japan, the majority of Germans oppose nuclear power,” Villis said in the statement. “The coming weeks will show until when and in what form nuclear power will be politically desired. Naturally, a new framework for the overhaul of Germany’s energy supply can’t be politically decided today, just five weeks after the events in Japan.”
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