RWE is to invest up to €15 billion (US$16.92 billion) into its renewable portfolio in Germany by 2030 as well as expanding its workforce through hiring 200 new staff to work on developing solar PV and wind in the country.
The German energy giant is developing three new solar-plus-storage projects in the Rhenish mining district on the sites of the Inden and Garzweiler opencast mines. The projects were among winners in Germany’s Innovation Tenders for renewable energy, for which bids combining two or more clean energy technologies were eligible.
RWE said the hybrid system in Inden will be “the first of its kind by RWE in Europe and will produce green electricity from the summer of 2022 onwards”.
“The Garzweiler and Jackerath projects on the site of the Garzweiler opencast mine are to start operation from 2023,” it said via a company media release.
“RWE sees particularly strong potential for growth in Germany,” said Katja Wunschel, RWE’s COO of Wind Onshore & Photovoltaic in Europe. “We thus want to step up the pace here and invest up to €15 billion gross in our green core business by 2030.”
In July, RWE upgraded its earnings forecast for 2021 after an “exceptionally positive” earnings trend. Its core business’s outlook went from €1.8- €2.2 billion in March 2021 to €2.15- €2.55 billion in July.
Meanwhile, the company will open seven new offices in cities across Germany to support the development of ground-mounted PV projects and onshore wind facilities.
The new offices are to be located in Berlin, Duesseldorf, Mainz, in the Heilbronn/Stuttgart and in the Augsburg/Munich metropolitan areas as well as in Leipzig and Rostock.
“The company is advertising around 200 new jobs for developing wind and solar farms,” RWE said, with further details of vacancies found on its jobs page.
The announcement of greater investment in Germany comes after the country’s new three-way coalition government set guidelines for future energy policy in the country, which include an expansion of planned renewable capacity and an accelerated phase out of coal power.
The coalition has agreed to double Germany’s solar target to 200GW by 2030, increase the country’s renewables target to 80% of electricity demand by 2030, up from 65%, and bring forward the coal phase-out date from 2038 to 2030.