Forum Topics AGL AGL Does anyone know how serious AGL's renewable energy business activities are?
soccerinvestor
Added 6 years ago

Does anyone know how serious AGL's renewable energy business activities are? Does AGL have room to grow in the renewables sector?

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Bear77
Added 6 years ago

https://www.agl.com.au/solar-renewables/renewables "Committed to helping shape a sustainable energy future for Australia. We're proud to be the largest ASX-listed investor in renewable energy generation in the country. Through our suite of renewable energy assets, we're taking action to power a sustainable energy future for our investors, communities and customers. "AGL plays a leading role in developing a pathway to a modern, decarbonised generation sector, developing and investing in new renewable and near-zero emission technologies. "Renewable sources are an important part of AGL’s generation capacity (power stations owned, operated or otherwise controlled by AGL). Our renewable energy generation comes from many locations and is produced through various sources - we turn sunshine and wind into energy as the primary sources of our renewable generation, we also operate a number of landfill gas, biogas and hydroelectric schemes." They have a button on that screen labelled, "LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW WE SOURCE ENERGY", which takes you to: https://www.agl.com.au/about-agl/how-we-source-energy That page contains HEAPS of info about all of their various types of renewable energy assets. In summary, they certainly ARE serious about renewables, but it pays to remember that they also operate thermal energy assets which generate electricity using heat that comes from gas or coal. AGL Loy Yang and AGL Macquarie are fueled by coal, while AGL Torrens uses gas. Their "Thermal Energy" suite of assets includes AGL Macquarie (NSW), AGL Loy Yang (Vic), AGL Torrens (SA), AGL Somerton (Vic), the Barker Inlet Power Project (SA), the Dalton Power Project (NSW), the Tarrone Power Project (Vic), and the Newcastle Power Station (NSW). Like Origin Energy (ORG), AGL also have a consumer-facing arm which markets energy plans to businesses and residential energy consumers (customers), so they have that retail aspect to the business as well. So - it's complicated. They are not a vanilla renewable energy company by any stretch, however they DO have significant renewable energy assets. They claim to be "the largest ASX-listed investor in renewable energy generation in the country", and they might well be exactly that. However, when they also have a substantial portfolio of coal-burning thermal energy production assets, it's difficult to label them as a "green" or "clean" energy company. Also, as with ORG, they don't simply own and run energy production assets either, they also have a retailing arm, so part of their future success also depends on how succesful they are in gaining and/or maintaining market share in energy retailing. Hope that helps @soccerinvestor.

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