RWE may cut jobs due to falling first-half profits

European energy giant RWE has claimed it will be cutting 2,400 jobs across the continent amid a drop in profits registered by its UK arm nPower.

RWE nPower’s first-half profits fell by just over 9% to £251 million ($317.5 million) compared to the same time last year, this despite the company raising its 6.5 million British electricity and gas customer energy bills by more than 10%.

It is largely thought the closure of its Tilbury-based biomass plant earlier this year due to a fire is the major cause for these losses, which Bioenergy Insight covered at the time.

Most of the proposed job cuts are expected to be in Germany, where RWE has its headquarters but it has been unable to rule out cuts in the UK, where it employs over 12,000 people

RWE CEO Peter Terium stated that the cuts were ‘essential to maintaining our market competitiveness, but we will be implementing them in a planned and transparent manner in full consultation with employee representatives’.