German electric utility company E.ON will not lose sight of the climate targets, while at the same time committing to ensure energy supply during the coronavirus outbreak.
“Energy utilities have a special significance for critical infrastructure in this crisis and thus a special responsibility,” said E.ON CEO Johannes Teyssen. “We’re Europe’s biggest operator of energy networks. Their reliability and continuous availability are of paramount importance for health care, public order, and people everywhere. We will do everything in our power to ensure supply security, even in this situation. Despite the difficult times, more than 14,000 of our employees are working for our customers in our networks and at our production facilities. Policymakers and the general public can count on us in this period as well.”
Mr Teyssen expects the crisis to leave its mark, anticipating a temporary decline in demand at its B2B business as well.
“Industrial and commercial customers are consuming noticeably less energy,” he explained. “This will have a temporary impact on our network and sales businesses. There may be delays in our ability to deliver energy infrastructure projects.”
However, after the current crisis, network expansion and the installation of climate-friendly energy infrastructure will surely be even more crucial and E.ON is confident that it will be able to overcome the current challenges.
“Our new focused business model enables us to benefit from the megatrends of decarbonisation, distributed solutions, and digitisation,” continued Mr Teyssen.
E.ON has set clear climate targets: it will be climate-neutral by 2040, and it will supply its customers with climate-neutral energy by 2050. Going forward, 90 per cent of E.ON’s investments into its core business will go toward customer-oriented energy infrastructure, namely in local and regional energy networks and helping E.ON’s customers expand their own distributed energy infrastructure.
“The energy system is becoming increasingly complicated, which will create the need for additional investment in eMobility, the electrification of heating systems, further decarbonisation, and energy storage,” Mr Teyssen underlined. “Consequently, the energy transition represents a major, multi-year investment opportunity for our local energy networks. It will enable us to further strengthen our position as a leading network operator. The implementation of the European Green Deal will accelerate these developments.”
E.ON is active across the energy supply chain, with activities that mostly overlap in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and the UK.
