Czech electricity group CEZ (CEZPsp.PR) aims to have 3,000 megawatts of installed capacity in renewable power abroad by 2016, the company said on Tuesday.
While the majority state-owned utility has scaled back foreign investment and re-focused on its domestic market, it plans to use its foreign operation as an expansion base for renewable sources since growth for this is limited in the Czech Republic.
CEZ has 620.5 MW of installed capacity already in service or being put into service in its foreign operations, including a planned 600 MW wind farm in Romania expected online in 2012.
"Given that opportunities in the Czech Republic are more or less used up, this development in renewable power has to be realised abroad," said Tomas Pleskac, CEZ's international division director.
Pleskac said that besides Romania, CEZ will concentrate on Poland and also possibly Germany.
CEZ invested heavily into foreign expansion from 2004 until the economic crisis in 2008-09.
Up to 2010, it had earned 39.5 billion crowns in cumulative earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) from foreign operations, or a little more than half of the 71.9 billion in investments made in the 2004-09 period.
It expects cumulative EBITDA from abroad to rise to 50.1 billion, or by 10.6 billion, by the end of this year. This means foreign operations will account for 12.5 percent of the 84.8 billion crowns in full-year EBITDA for the whole company that CEZ has guided.
"With cumulative EBITDA, this year we will have raised it by (more than) 10 billion for the first time, and I think a similar figure can be repeated next year," Pleskac said.
