German giant pledges $6b in green energy push
Germany’s biggest energy utility, RWE, has pledged to invest about $6 billion in a major expansion of its Australian renewable power business by 2030, undeterred by the hurdles in the way of the build-out of wind and solar energy across the country.
Chief executive Markus Krebber met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Perth on Monday to outline the commitment, which will involve a 13-fold expansion of RWE’s existing business here to add up to 3 gigawatts of capacity by the end of the decade.
RWE AG CEO Markus Krebber after signing a deal for wind power expansion in Brisbane on Tuesday. Glenn Campbell
The growth will come from new wind, solar and storage projects developed within the Australian business of Essen-based RWE, which examined potential renewables acquisitions here before opting for organic expansion.
RWE’s pledge comes amid mounting hurdles to the growth of wind and solar power that are creating doubts around whether Australia can meet its target for 82 per cent renewable energy use by 2030, a major plank of the nation’s emissions reduction strategy.
Those include planning approval delays, slow grid connections, community objections to new transmission lines, supply chain problems, labour and materials shortages and rising costs, which combined have meant that the pace of adding renewable energy has fallen well behind what is needed for achieving the 2030 goals.
But Mr Krebber said those problems were being observed worldwide and pointed to a clear willingness to get the hurdles removed, with everybody “working in the right direction”.
“We have a high confidence that we can deliver, whether it slips a year or not, that remains to be seen,” Mr Krebber told The Australian Financial Review from Brisbane,
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