Smarting from the phase-out of nuclear energy in Germany, E.On recently reported a $2.5 billion loss for 2011.
The German utility reported earnings of $12.1 billion – 30 percent lower than the previous year. In a release, E.On attributed $3.26 billion of the earnings shortfall to Germany’s decision to take several reactors out of service and decommission the rest over the next decade. Earnings reflected a further $1.3 billion reduction from the company’s power generation business in Europe. The bad news was offset somewhat by earnings growth in renewables, Russian power generation and gas.
Nonetheless, E.On’s underlying net income declined by about half year-over-year to $3.26 billion. This year the company expects earnings of between $12.5 billion and $13.29 billion.
“For 2012, we expect to post an earnings increase that will continue in subsequent years,” CEO Johannes Teyssen said in the release, which described the company’s business as “past the worst.”
Following last year’s Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan, the German government ordered seven of its older reactors to shut down. Later, it decided those plants, and an eight not online at the time, would be taken out of service permanently. The country’s remaining reactors will be decommissioned by 2022.
E.On owns six of the affected reactors. Isar 1 and Unterweser were both shut down last March. The Grafenrheinfeld, Brokdorf, Grohnde and Isar 2 plants will be decommissioned over the next decade, starting with Grafenrheinfeld in 2015.