RWE Drops Biomass Power, Adds Biomass Thermal, Wind

- by Anna Simet, March 12, 2015, Biomass Magazine

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"422","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 255px; height: 171px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]While RWE Group reported it achieved its earnings targets for 2014 and EBITDA was significantly better than planned, low electricity prices and unusually mild weather negatively affected business performance, which dropped 25 percent from 2013 to 2014.

Peter Terium, CEO of RWE, said that currently, 35 to 45 percent of the utility’s conventional power stations are no longer making any money under current market conditions. “I am not talking about book values—these power stations are costing us real money,” he said. “We cannot avoid the sobering fact that conventional power generation is hardly viable any longer under current market conditions.”

He added that recent modernizations of RWE’s portfolio of power stations haven’t paid off, and that it is difficult to keep a gas or hard coal-fired power station commercially feasible. Previous Investments have made RWE the third-largest gas-fired power station operator in Europe, with capacity of around 15,000 megawatts across the continent. “Considering how quickly the electricity wholesale price fell in recent years, it would be impossible to cut a power station’s costs at the same rate to maintain margins or even make any profit at all,” he said.

Windfarms More Efficient than Biofuels?

- by Aidan Harrison, December 5, 2014, Northumberland Gazette

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"337","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"320","style":"width: 333px; height: 222px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]Its obsession with ‘markets’ has already placed our railways and utilities in the hands of big foreign state and corporate-owned monopolies.

The first thing to make clear is that the technology of wind power is nothing like as inefficient as its fanatical detractors claim.

In terms of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), it is better than nuclear and shale gas, yet safe and clean.

It is infinitely more energy-efficient than utilising good farmland for biofuel production. Ninety-seven per cent of the dash for turbines is outside the UK, with such politically diverse places as China, Chile and Texas piling into wind power. Can the rest of the world really be so wrong?

The latest figures show that in October, Scotland’s wind turbines produced more Kw/hrs than the country consumed.

Yes, they receive taxpayer support, but only a tiny fraction of the money which our Government has promised to France and Communist China for building two nuclear power stations in Somerset.