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ENERGY

Danish energy firm posts profits as electricity and gas prices rocket

Danish company Ørsted said on Wednesday its energy sales increased by 54 percent in 2021’s third quarter, citing hikes in gas and electricity prices as the driving factor.

Danish energy company Ørsted posted large profits in 2021's Q3 due to high gas and electricity prices. The company wants to ramp up sustainable production by 2030.
Danish energy company Ørsted posted large profits in 2021's Q3 due to high gas and electricity prices. The company wants to ramp up sustainable production by 2030. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

The commercial division of Ørsted, Bioenergy & Other, reported a 6.6 billion kroner profit in the third quarter of this year, a 54 percent increase.

Operating profits meanwhile rose to 1.2 billion kroner in Q3, according to the results.

Gas prices are six times the normal rate and electricity three time more expensive than normal, the company said.

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“(The large profits) are due to extraordinarily good results from our power stations and high revenues from our gas businesses,” Ørsted writes in the results.

Although increasing gas and energy prices have given Ørsted strong results, the company, which has invested in wind and solar power, has not grown overall.

For the entire Ørsted company, operating profits in the third quarter dropped by just under 400 million kroner to 3.4 billion kroner.

That is because a relatively low amount of wind reduced the amount of energy produced by Ørsted’s wind farms.

Earlier this year, the Danish company published a plan to quadruple its position on sustainable energy by 2030.

That includes building wind and solar power farms to produce 50 gigawatts of power.

Contracts signed by the company so far can ensure 18 gigawatts of sustainable production, Ørsted said in its published results.

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BUSINESS

France’s EDF hails €10billion profit, despite huge UK nuclear charge

French energy giant EDF has unveiled net profit of €10billion and cut its massive debt by increasing nuclear production after problems forced some plants offline.

France's EDF hails €10billion profit, despite huge UK nuclear charge

EDF hailed an “exceptional” year after its loss of €17.9billion in 2022.

Sales slipped 2.6 percent to €139.7billion , but the group managed to slice debt by €10billion euros to €54.4billion.

EDF said however that it had booked a €12.9 billion depreciation linked to difficulties at its Hinkley Point nuclear plant in Britain.

The charge includes €11.2 billion for Hinkley Point assets and €1.7billion at its British subsidiary, EDF Energy, the group explained.

EDF announced last month a fresh delay and additional costs for the giant project hit by repeated cost overruns.

“The year was marked by many events, in particular by the recovery of production and the company’s mobilisation around production recovery,” CEO Luc Remont told reporters.

EDF put its strong showing down to a strong operational performance, notably a significant increase in nuclear generation in France at a time of historically high prices.

That followed a drop in nuclear output in France in 2022. The group had to deal with stress corrosion problems at some reactors while also facing government orders to limit price rises.

The French reactors last year produced around 320.4 TWh, in the upper range of expectations.

Nuclear production had slid back in 2022 to 279 TWh, its lowest level in three decades, because of the corrosion problems and maintenance changes after
the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hinkley Point C is one of a small number of European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) worldwide, an EDF-led design that has been plagued by cost overruns
running into billions of euros and years of construction delays.

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