Monday 26 May 2008

Iberdrola to invest $8 billion in US renewable energy

www.environmental-finance.com/
Online News, London, 22 May:

Iberdrola Renewables is to invest $8 billion in renewable energy in the US by 2010, with the intention of attaining a 15% share of the US wind power market. Through its renewable energy subsidiary, the Spanish utility Iberdrola, which recently became the world's largest owner of wind power capacity, aims to more than double its US wind capacity, where it has already invested $9 billion in recent years.

A spokesman for Iberdrola said that the company currently has a 12% market share in US wind, so the 15% target "may not seem a big jump, but it takes into account the expectations of very rapid growth in this sector." At the end of the first quarter of this year, Iberdrola had nearly 2,400 MW of wind power in the US and it intends to finish the year with 3,600 MW. It is the second largest player in the US wind power market behind Florida-based FPL Energy.

"Iberdrola has had its own presence in the US largely on the eastern side of the country, Pennsylvania particularly, but when Iberdrola bought Scottish Power it inherited a company called PPM Energy in the States, which is a very large producer of wind power and has quite a considerable pipeline as well. That, added to Iberdrola's own pipeline, means that the growth is quite strong," the spokesman added.

Announcing the move, Iberdrola's president, Ignacio Galan, stressed that this commitment requires an improvement in the US regulatory framework, which must be predictable, sufficient and provide stability. The move comes after first quarter figures showed a large increase in US wind capacity, with 1,400 MW installed at a cost of $3 billion. A US energy department report released this month said that wind power could supply 20% of US electricity needs by 2030, with the number of annual installations needing to more than triple by 2017 to achieve that.

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