Iberdrola chief says global renewable sector facing Enron-style endgame

As the 2008 financial crash fades into history, a sudden lack of availability of cheap money for big industrial projects could undermine some of the newer renewables enterprises, if or when bankers start asking for their ‘umbrellas’ back.

The chief executive of Spanish utility Iberdrola, Ignacio Galan, has warned of the prospect of financial disaster for the global renewable energy sector, reminiscent of the collapse of Enron, reports PEI.

Galan said, that the imminent end of cheap finance would have a damaging impact on the new players to the green energy market, adding that these new non-industrial entrants with little experience were making overly aggressive bids on contracts to build renewable energy, thinking its was a financial “el Dorado”.

“Because money is so cheap, many people who have no talent in the sector have been coming with an extremely high level of leverage,” he told the Financial Times. “With the change of the rates, there will be a clean up of the sector.”

As the company on Wednesday reported a 3.6 per cent rise in full-year net profit to €2.8bn and €32bn in investment over the next five years, he added: “I think that what happened with Enron [could happen again]. Enron was highly leveraged . . . and they had no talent as a utility or as traders. And what happened — it disappeared.”

Mr Galán was not accusing any new entrants in the renewable sector — some of whom are private equity or infrastructure funds — of the kind of false accounting that led to US energy trader Enron’s collapse in 2001. He was instead highlighting how cheap money was pushing some into a business they did not understand.

The warning speaks to a wider fear about the potential disruption to global businesses as central bankers start to unwind a multi-trillion-dollar experiment in ultra-loose monetary policy.

Mr Galán said: “Bankers always give an umbrella when it is not raining, but when it rains they ask for it back.”

Continued here.