FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Profit growth at RWE (RWEG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) lagged that of its main peer E.ON (EONGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), reflecting a slower adjustment by Germany’s No.2 utility to the country’s exit from nuclear power and underlining the group’s need to renegotiate expensive gas contracts.

RWE said on Tuesday its core earnings (EBITDA) rose 9 percent year-on-year to 5.04 billion euros ($6.23 billion) compared with E.ON’s 55 percent increase posted on Monday.

FRANKFURT, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Profit growth at RWE
lagged main peer E.ON on Tuesday, reflecting a slower
adjustment by Germany’s No.2 utility to the country’s exit from
nuclear power.

RWE’s first-half earnings before interest, tax, depreciation
and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 9 percent year-on-year to 5.04
billion euros ($6.23 billion), compared with E.ON’s 55 percent
increase posted on Monday.

BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT, July 29 (Reuters) – Germany’s decision
to abandon nuclear energy and dwindling domestic subsidies for
renewables have stoked a dazzlingly ambitious plan to expand
Europe’s energy market into North Africa, with an array of giant
solar and wind plants glinting in the desert sun.

Desertec, a German consortium set up in 2009, envisages
Europe will import up to a fifth of its electricity from solar
and wind parks in North Africa and the Middle East by 2050.

DUESSELDORF/FRANKFURT, July 25 (Reuters) – The solar
industry’s ongoing trade war reached Europe after a group of
solar companies, led by Germany’s SolarWorld, filed an
anti-dumping complaint against Chinese rivals with the European
Commission, a person familiar with the matter said.

A spokesman for SolarWorld — which had previously signalled
its intention to submit a complaint — declined to comment,
saying only that the group would publish a press release on the
matter at the end of the week.

WUERGASSEN, Germany, July 17 (Reuters) – Peter Klimmek has
spent his entire career at a nuclear plant in Germany. Next
year, he will retire — just months before his workplace does.

The nuclear plant in the small and remote village of
Wuergassen, halfway between Frankfurt and Hamburg, has been
Klimmek’s passion for the past 37 years.

FRANKFURT, July 11 (Reuters) – German prosecutors have
opened preliminary proceedings into alleged links between Morgan
Stanley’s top dealmaker in Germany and the former premier
of the regional state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, relating to the
state’s purchase of shares in German utility EnBW in
2010.

The Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office said “sufficient
and actual clues have emerged” suggesting ex-premier Stefan
Mappus could have made himself liable to prosecution for breach
of trust, while Morgan Stanley’s Dirk Notheis could have made
himself liable to prosecution for aiding and abetting breach of
trust.

BRANDE, Denmark/BREMERHAVEN, Germany, July 10 (Reuters) -
A ndreas Wellbrock is proud of his pontoon.

The floating vessel transports gigantic tripods -
reminiscent of rusty space rockets – through the harbour of
Bremerhaven, a German port city located on the North Sea.

FRANKFURT, July 4 (Reuters) – E.ON (EONGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) expects a new
deal on gas prices with Gazprom (GAZP.MM: Quote, Profile, Research) to add a billion euros
to its profits, but some analysts see the benefits as short-term
in the face of a bleak economic outlook that will depress
margins in power generation.

Germany’s biggest utility said on Tuesday it had agreed with
Russia’s top gas producer Gazprom on lower prices for long-term
gas supplies, leading the group to raise its profit outlook for
2012. [ID:nL6E8I3500]

FRANKFURT, July 3 (Reuters) – Russia’s Gazprom has
given in to customer pressure and offered German utility E.ON
a price cut on its long-term gas supplies, boding
well for other firms from Germany, Italy and Poland seeking to
renegotiate.

Germany’s biggest utility said on Tuesday it had reached a
settlement with Gazprom on long-term gas supply contracts that
would significantly raise its earnings outlook for 2012.

FRANKFURT, June 14 (Reuters) – The crisis surrounding the
German solar power industry deepened on Thursday with equipment
maker Centrotherm saying it could no longer use
existing credit lines and was talking to its banks, a day after
smaller peer SolarWatt filed for insolvency.

Shares in Centrotherm, the world’s second-biggest maker of
production equipment for solar panels and photovoltaic cells,
fell as much as 40 percent to an all-time low of 3.08 euros per
share, a far cry from the record high of 69.68 euros per share
reached in November 2007.