Czech group bucks green trend with bet on coal
Going against a trend set by its European peers to divest from coal, the Czech energy group EPH is buying coal-fired power plants across the continent.
Set up in 2009, EPH (Energeticky a Prumyslovy Holding) relies on coal for more than half of its production capacity.
Its annual production of more than 100 million megawatt-hours in its plants in Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia -enough to power around 30 million homes - makes EPH the seventh largest power producer in Europe.
EPH has been on a shopping spree, snapping up coal-fired electricity plants from European energy giants like E.ON, Enel and RWE, which are happy to sell them.
The Wall Street Journal reports that EPH aims to serve as a stopgap for Europe as it makes the transition to a power grid fueled by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, seeking to compensate for the intermittency of those technologies.
"You need to have cheap, stable power plants stabilizing the system, and this is what we are operating," EPH chief executive Tomas David said.
Source: China Post, Wall Street Journal