Enel Green Power’s ‘New Energy’

Enel Green Power’s contribution to the Group’s EBITDA amounts to around €2 billion, and it is expected to increase over the next five years by adding 7.1 GW of installed capacity, investing €8.8 billion on growth, developing its presence in the Americas and Africa and managing dynamically its asset portfolio

Once upon a time there was alternative energy. It seems like ages have gone by, but actually not many years ago this is how renewable energy was generically defined: almost a hypothesis, more than something real. Today, with forecasts assigning 50 percent of global electricity consumption growth to green sources by 2030, especially wind and solar photovoltaic power are the technologies on which emerging, mature and developing economies aim to meet so many different needs.

“We are the new energy”,said Enel Green Power Francesco Venturini in a recent interview with First after the presentation of the 2015-2019 business plan, in which development, investments and new markets result in increased figures compared with the previous plan and in a strategy that combines the traditional pairing of geographical diversification–technological diversification with the portfolio’s dynamic management to free resources and with management and operation optimisation.

Growing with renewable energy is one of the Enel Group’s guidelines for the next five-year period, when it will allocate 48 percent of its investments to green sources. EGP, which presently contributes with some €2 billion to the Group’s EBITDA, expects to further increase its share by raising the current 9.,6 GW of generation capacity to 16 GW in 2019.

Latin America, as well as Africa and the Asia-Pacific region are EGP’s development areas already now and in the very near future, as documented by the figures of the first quarter 2015 and the results of the 2014 financial statement. Growing markets that have already driven and pushed the ‘green revolution’ across the world are expansion areas on which EGP will focus, thus making a contribution to the green development of the whole Enel Group. “All producers’ growth programmes are shifting to renewable sources”, Venturini said. “This type of change has already taken place at least four or five times over the last 150 years: from wood, to hydro, to gas and nuclear, and now mainly wind and solar power. Until recently we used the term alternative energy, but now this adjective makes no longer sense: today wealth is produced precisely from green generation and smart distribution and services. Enel had an eye to the future when, in December 2008, it established EGP: together with smart grids and new integrated services for customers, it will constitute the Enel of the future”.