E.ON says will be almost emissions-free by 2006
Date: 30-Aug-01
Country: GERMANY
Germany targets a 21 percent cut in greenhouse gases (GHGs), chiefly CO2, from 1990 levels by 2010, as part of its commitment under the UN-sponsored climate deal agreed in Kyoto in 1997.
Its energy firms are making specific reductions to help meet a total industry target cut of 45 million tonnes of CO2/year.
"Our recent agreements with Sweden's Sydkraft and Austria's Verbund mean that two thirds of our group power production will be CO2 free by 2006," E.ON Energie's company policy chief Frank Hoepner told a Euroforum conference.
"Sydkraft produces electricity from hydro and nuclear, while Verbund uses 100 percent hydro for generation," he added.
E.ON gained management control of Sydkraft - Sweden's second biggest utility in May.
In July the German firm announced it would form a joint venture with Verbund to pool their hydropower operations.
It expects that new company, European Hydro Power GmbH, will be Europe's second biggest listed water-powered electricity generator.
Hoepner said that the changes in the group meant it would be able to cut total annual emissions from its current 400 kilowatt hours (kWh) of CO2 to less than 300 kWh/year, which contrasts with the German industry average of 500 kWh/year.
What E.ON's total emissions will be in the long-term is harder to predict, Hoepner said, as Germany plans to phase out all nuclear energy by 2020.
The Stade reactor, which E.ON jointly owns with Hamburg utility HEW , will be the first nuclear plant to be shut, in 2003.
But taking the new fuel makeup of the E.ON group into account, the German firm will have in fact 40 percent - five percent less - power generated from nuclear, while its hydro base will jump to 25 percent from seven percent.
Its proportion of coal-fired generation will shrink to 25 percent from 34 percent from hard coal and to seven percent from 10 percent from brown coal.
The remaining fuel sources will be natural gas and oil at together three percent.
"The period of the nuclear phase-out will start with Stade in 2003, but most of Germany's nuclear power plants will not be decommissioned in the mid-term," Hoepner said.
"But in the long run we will have to think of a replacement.