• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Tiny Poweo Shocks France's Energy Markets With Powerful Expansion

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 December 2005, 18:00 CST

By Ross Tieman, The Business, London

Dec. 18--TOULOUSE -- A one-time London investment banker turned serial entrepreneur is to build France's first combined-cycle gas-fired power station, sending shock waves through the country's liberalising energy markets.

Charles Beigbeder, who made a fortune in online stock broking, says the plant is the first of five planned by his energy-trading company, Poweo. Capitalised at just E108m on Euronext Paris, with sales last year of E27.8m, Poweo has chosen German engineering group Siemens to build and operate its first power plant.

The E180m ($214m, £121m), 412MW gas-burning power station at Pont Sur Sambre, in north-east France, is scheduled to come on stream in the second half of 2008, delivering power through the French grid to Poweo's retail customers.

Poweo is negotiating sites for a second 400MW plant and three 800MW power stations, all burning gas in a country hitherto reliant on nuclear power for almost 88 percent of its needs. Building 3,200MW of capacity would make Poweo France's second-largest electricity supplier after state-econtrolled Electricite de France (EdF), which floated on Euronext last month and is capitalised at E59bn.

At the age of 41, Beigbeder characterises a new kind of French businessman, skilled in finance and strategy, and keen to seize the opportunities offered by new technology.

Trained as an engineer, he first worked at Anglo-French satellite maker Matra Marconi Space before becoming an investment banker with Paribas Affaires Industrielles and Credit Suisse First Boston in Paris, then MC-BBL Securities in London.

He founded French online broker Self Trade in 1997 and after five years sold it to Germany's DAB Bank for shares.

In 2002 he founded Poweo as an electricity trader to take advantage of the phased opening of the French electricity market decreed by Brussels.

In less than four years, Poweo has become the country's leading independent electricity supplier, in a E15bn a year commercial and industrial market, with 70,000 customers for power it buys wholesale from EdF, Spanish-owned coal generator La Snet, and Italy's Enel, among others. Poweo claims to have captured 49 percent of customers who have switched supplier.

Beigbeder's drive into low-cost gas-fired generation is shaped by forecasts from the national power grid operating company, RTE, that capacity increases and peak demand cuts totalling 3000MW are needed over the next five years. Thereafter, demand is forecast to grow by 1000MW a year.

-----

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Business, London

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

SI, SIE, EDF, EN,

Source: Sunday Business

More News in this Category