E.ON to invest Eur27 billion by 2026 into Europe's energy transition

Europe's biggest energy network operator E.ON plans to invest some Eur27 billion ($30.4 billion) in the energy transition over the five years to 2026, the Germany-based utility said Nov.23.

Some Eur22 billion are planned for the expansion of its gas and power distribution networks with E.ON also planning to add 5,000 new electric vehicle charging points across Europe boosting its customer solutions business, it said.

"E.ON will now launch a comprehensive growth and investment offensive to establish a zero-carbon energy world," CEO Leonhard Birnbaum said presenting the updated investment plan.

E.ON's core businesses with roughly 50 million utility customers across Europe will benefit substantially from Europe's energy transition, the new CEO added.

Annual investments in energy networks will be lifted by Eur1 billion/year through to 2026 boosting its regulated asset base (RAB) by at least 6% per year.

E.ON's power grids already host 1 million distributed renewable generating facilities.

"In the next five years alone, our networks will integrate 35 to 40 GW of additional renewables capacity," E.ON board member Thomas Koenig said.

In addition, millions of heat pumps as well as EV batteries will come online via E.ON's customer solutions unit, it said, which would increase network demand with the company planning to be one of the first energy companies to have full digital control of its network infrastructure at all voltage levels.

European gas and power prices have hit all-time highs in 2021 amid an unprecedented rally in gas.

S&P Global Platts Analytics forecasts power and gas prices to fall over the five years to 2026 amid growing renewables capacity.

E.ON has already spun off its conventional generation assets as Uniper and swapped its renewables assets with RWE's network and utility operations after the first phase of Europe's energy transition put pressure on traditional utility models.

RWE on Nov.15 outlined plans to spend some Eur50 billion for a 50 GW renewables target by 2030.