Europe

Several gigawatts of solar energy faded from European grids during the two-hour solar eclipse that shadowed the continent, as well as parts of Northern Africa and Asia, on Friday morning. But according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E)—an organization representing 41 transmission system operators (TSOs) from 34 European countries—grid operators […]

Persistently low prices on the wholesale electricity market are forcing RWE—the third-largest electricity provider in Europe, serving 16 million customers—to consider dismantling some gas-fired power plants and shipping them abroad, Dr. Rolf Martin Schmitz, RWE’s COO, told Reuters in an interview. The German-based company has been struggling for awhile. In August 2014, RWE announced that […]

A group of hackers apparently based in Moscow has been conducting an “ongoing cyberespionage campaign” against energy sector companies in the U.S. and Western Europe, according to a report released June 30 by computer security firm Symantec. The targets included “energy grid operators, major electricity generation firms, petroleum pipeline operators, and energy industry industrial equipment […]

RWE AG is Europe’s third-largest electricity and fifth-largest gas marketer, with holdings in upstream oil and gas production, power grids, and energy trading. Its German power subsidiary has been the utility poster child for the effects of the Energiewende, the transformation of the Germany power system away from nuclear and coal toward renewable energy and […]

Despite frail demand for natural gas in Europe and difficulties in upstream production growth in the Middle East and Africa, the “Golden Age” of natural gas will remain in full swing until at least 2018, recent projections from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show. A medium-term outlook released by the Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization in […]

Europe’s Gas Power Plant Carnage Intensifies Another 1.2 GW of gas-fired generation has been idled in Germany as utilities scramble to rein losses that are pegged to falling wholesale electricity prices and a surge in renewable power generation. Norwegian power company Statkraft put into “wet reserve” the 800-MW Knapsack 1 and 417-MW Herdecke power plants, […]

Europe’s third-largest power provider on Tuesday announced it would take offline 3.1 GW of natural gas and coal power plants in Germany and the Netherlands, citing a “continuing boom in solar energy.” Echoing several European utilities, Germany-based RWE has underscored the declining profitability of fossil fuel–fired plants that it says is pegged to fundamental changes […]