New AGE

Macquarie has seen the writing on the wall and it has been explained this way.
The way to profitability is investing in climate change.
Renewable energy will ring out in the corridors of MQG.
German energy company EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg has agreed to sell a stake in an offshore wind farm to Australia's Macquarie Capital in a deal worth €720 million ($A1.06 billion).
The sale of the 49.9 per cent stake -- which EnBW said is subject to approval by competition authorities and should be completed by next summer -- comes as the German group has embarked on a €7bn strategic realignment focused on investment in renewable energy and distribution networks.
"EnBW is using a model of participation [with Macquarie] that allows for more financial leeway to drive growth," EnBW Chief Financial Officer Thomas Kusterer said.
The German government wants to wean the country off nuclear and fossil fuels by midcentury -- a flagship policy dubbed the Energiewende, or energy revolution -- and many German energy companies are moving increasingly into renewables.
The policy has also created excess capacity which has pushed down German energy prices, leaving EnBW and rival German utilities like E.ON and RWE with significant uneconomic conventional and nuclear power generating assets. The German industry is in the middle of far-reaching reorganisation to cope with the changes.


The wind farm which Macquarie -- a specialist in investing in infrastructure -- is buying into lies 32 kilometres off the coast of the island of Rügen in northeast Germany. Baltic 2, as the project is known, should be operational in the spring of this year.
MQG