E.ON plan to invest a total of up to EUR30 billion in the period 2009-2011. About one third of these investments will go towards the maintenance and replacement of existing infrastructure. The main focus will be on securing our generating and network capacity for the long term and on renewing and maintaining our generation portfolio. Here, the key feature is the construction of high-efficiency coal-fired and gas-fired power plants in Europe, in particularly Germany and the United Kingdom. The remaining two thirds represent growth investments. A significant portion is earmarked for the expansion of our conventional generating capacity in the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia, and Russia.

Less coal, more energy. The average hard-coal-fired power plant in Europe has a thermal efficiency of 36 percent; the global average is just 30 percent. E.ON intends to build the world's first coal-fired power plant with a thermal efficiency of more than 50 percent, setting new standards for generation technology. The 500 MW plant, the result of over a decade of R&D, will be sited in Wilhelmshaven in northwest Germany.

We're planning to build the United Kingdom's first new coal-fired power station in over two decades, a 1.6 GW facility at Kingsnorth in southeast England. It could also become one of the world’s first large carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) facilities. That’s because it's designed to be retrofitted with CCS as soon as this technology is proven on a commercial scale and the necessary regulatory or economic drivers are in place. Our project team in Ratcliffe-on-Soar is sharing their expertise to ensure that the power station's design, like those for our new-build projects in Wilhelmshaven and Antwerp, is certified capture-ready by TÜV Nord, a leading independent inspection and testing firm.

In early 2008, E.ON began the construction of Maasvlakte Power Plant 3 (MPP3) in the harbor area of Rotterdam. MPP3 is a 1,100 MW high-efficiency coal-fired unit that will produce enough electricity to meet 7 percent of the Netherlands' total needs. Like Maasvlakte's existing units, MPP3 will be able to co-fire biomass. It's also being designed and built for subsequent retrofitting with carbon-capture technology.