2020 Success Stories

ERG’s more than 80 years of experience in the energy sector, of which more than 60 in Oil, has created a strong foundation on which we are now continuing to build our green growth. Beginning in 2006, our successful transition to green energy, with a strong focus on wind, has led us to become one of the primary renewable operators in Italy and a top-10 player in the European onshore scene.

This foundation proved to be crucial during a year in which a pandemic would bring the global economy to its knees and weaken the power consumption substantially. It meant that we had the necessary experience, were prepared to take the indispensable measures, and had the courage to continue to aim at increasing our position in the clean energy sector, even as the situation around us was changing by the day. In fact, not only did get through 2020 wholeheartedly; our ability to ensure business continuity by relocating and managing office work from home through effective IT measures and rapid upskilling, and the reliability of our renewable power plants, enabled us to achieve some important results along the way. In short, we managed to further reduce the cost of debt through green finance, we kept our greenfield development abroad well on track, we achieved some important recognition of our strong ESG Commitments, and – to our great satisfaction – we got through the period without layoffs or using furlough schemes, even adding some of new colleagues to the team.

Specifically, during 2020, on the finance front, we successfully issued a €500mn 7-year Fixed Green Bond which was highly requested by investors. With regards to ESG, we took top spot globally in Vigeo’s ranking of company reporting on business impact of Climate Change and were assigned an “A-” rating in the climate change programme promoted by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) – with a maximum score in Governance and Risk Management and. When it comes to procurement, we signed a Framework Supply agreement with Vestas for 790MW (worth potentially €500mn) covering Repowering and Greenfield projects in both Italy and the UK. Finally, on the M&A and business development front, we acquired a 24.5MW RtB wind farm project in Poland with total CAPEX of €36.5mn, which is expected to be in operation by 1H 2022, two of our French wind projects -with a total capacity of 27MW – were successful in the onshore tender, and our UK capacity under construction was increased by 55MW through the increase in the capacity of our Sandy Knowe (48MW to 90MW) and Creag Riabhach (79MW to 92MW) wind farm projects.