(Oil Price) – Germany-based utility giant RWE is expanding its U.S. portfolio beyond renewables, focusing a large part of planned $19 billion investments in the United States by 2031 on gas-fired power generation.
RWE – which ditched U.S. offshore wind last year after the Trump Administration signaled renewables would not be a priority and wouldn’t be supported going forward – is now betting big on flexible gas peaking capacity in the United States, where electricity demand is soaring and gas is cheap and abundant.
“In the US, we are broadening our portfolio and now focusing on gas in addition to renewables,” RWE’s chief executive Markus Krebber said on Thursday in an announcement of the company’s planned investments between 2026 and 2031.
RWE intends to expand its business in the U.S. “even more than before,” investing 17 billion euros, or $19.3 billion net – almost half of all planned investments of 35 billion euros, or $40 billion.
The German firm expects its installed capacity in the U.S. to increase from 13 gigawatts (GW) today to 22 GW by 2031.
“In addition to wind and solar power plants and battery storage facilities, the build-out will also include flexible generation. The focus here is on adding flexible gas peaking capacity,” RWE said.
The U.S. sees unprecedented power demand growth—AI infrastructure, data centers, and advanced manufacturing are driving the first meaningful growth in U.S. power consumption since the 1990s. The growth is set to average about 2% each year over the next decade, making new electricity generation capacity critical to supporting the advance in AI and the onshoring of manufacturing.
“Natural gas will benefit significantly from the rising electricity demand and the requirement for 24/7 uninterrupted supply. It is most flexible among all energy sources and an abundant domestic resource,” analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a report last year.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
