RWE envisions a green future as protesters call for faster change

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – RWE told shareholders Friday that it would be at the center of Germany's transformation into renewable energy, but protested against environmentalists who say the country is not doing enough. quickly to abandon fossil fuels.

RWE is in the process of reorganizing itself before a complex badet exchange with its industry counterpart, E.ON, later this year and the decision of Germany to phase out coal by 2038 .

As part of the exchange, RWE will take back a series of renewable badets from its subsidiaries Innogy and E.ON, which will give it a green power generation capacity of 10 gigawatts (10 GW) and make it the third company. renewable energy and the world's number five.

"This will give our company an excellent prospect for the future," said Rolf Schmitz, general manager of the company, at its annual general meeting in Essen, in western Germany, adding that the old RWE would hardly be recognizable a year from now.

"We are motivated by the goal of producing a clean and safe electricity supply," he said. "We want to become the engine of growth for the world of tomorrow's energy."

Last week, RWE announced the cancellation of a future investment in coal. Chief Financial Officer, Markus Krebber, told Reuters that a week ago, the company would spend billions of euros in developing green energy.

But outside the AGM, activists protested Germany's slow energy transformation.

Protesters, including members of the Fridays for the Future movement and students who were jumping to school, waved placards that read: "Brown Coal Madness – we are not We have more means "and" The climate punishes the retarded ".

RWE still operates a large production capacity using highly polluting lignite and hard coal in its main European markets, namely Germany, the Benelux countries and Great Britain.

Earlier this year, RWE badured that it would not touch the Hambach Forest, near Cologne, at the center of the anti-RWE and anti-coal protests until the end of 2020, which it hoped to empty for the first time. extraction of lignite.

(Tom Kaeckenhoff Report, Vera Eckert Writing, Mark Potter Edition)