Portugal’s largest utility Energias de Portugal (EDP) wants to build capacity of 500 megawatts (MW) in Germany’s solar market by 2026, its chief executive said on Tuesday.
“Germany is a large market and it has plenty of growth potential,” Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade told Reuters on the sidelines of the Handelsblatt energy summit in Berlin.
He said momentum in Germany was strong, citing a clear pro-environment commitment, falling costs of renewables technology and a stronger focus on energy as a matter of national security following the Ukraine war.
“For these three reasons, we think that Europe is going to have this huge amount of investment over many years, and Germany for us is a key market,” Stilwell d’Andrade said.
EDP is the major shareholder in EDPR, which in 2022 bought 70% of Germany’s Kronos Solar Projects, hoping to build on that company’s presence in a number of European countries.
Kronos Solar’s activities were creating opportunities to expand in wind power, hydrogen and energy storage technologies, he said.
“Storage is one of the missing pieces of the energy transition puzzles,” said Stilwell d’Andrade, who serves as CEO of both EDP and EDPR.
The Portuguese company wants to dedicate 25 billion euros ($27 billion) globally to renewables and grids over the 2023-2026 period, of which 40% will be spent in Europe. Of that share, a fifth will go to Germany.
(Reporting by Vera Eckert, Tom Kaeckenhoff and Christoph Steitz; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
