By Francesca Landini
MILAN (Reuters) -Italy’s Eni said on Thursday it would expand its low-carbon activities as part of its 2025-2028 strategy, creating a new company for its carbon capture and storage activities, and offering power for data centres.
The state-controlled group said it would add the two new businesses to its renewable and retail unit, Plenitude, and its biofuel division Enilive.
It confirmed the target of net zero carbon emissions for its upstream business by 2030 but did not mention specifically its previous targets for reduction of indirect Scope 3 emissions.
Eni’s announcement came a day after British rival BP said it would scale back its investments on renewables.
“We expect demand for power from data centres in Europe and Italy could triple between now and 2030 … To support this development Eni enjoys significant advantages in key areas,” CEO Claudio Descalzi said in a strategy presentation.
Eni said it could offer data centres so-called blue power energy from gas-fired plants paired with CCS technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
A new company bringing together all of Eni’s CCS activities will be created this year, Descalzi said.
A strategy based on setting up separate entities – or satellites – and opening them up to minority stakeholders has so far allowed Eni to raise funds to invest both in the energy transition and its traditional oil and gas business.
INCREASED DISTRIBUTION
Eni said it planned net capital expenditure of 7 billion euros ($7.29 billion) a year in 2025-2028 and expected its leverage – which measures total debt in relation to equity – to average around 16% over the period, after raising around 20% in 2023.
The group said it would distribute between 35% and 40% of its cash flow from operations to shareholders, up from 30%-35% indicated last year.
This increase would translate this year into a 5% rise in the dividend to 1.05 euros per share, and a share buyback initially set at 1.5 billion euros.
For the fourth quarter, the energy group reported a 46% slide in adjusted net profit to 892 million euros, due to lower energy prices and weakness at its refining, biofuel and chemicals divisions.
The energy group also said it signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysia’s state energy firm Petronas to create a joint venture for some upstream assets in Indonesia and Malaysia.
($1 = 0.9608 euros)
(Reporting by Francesca Landini, editing by Gianluca Semeraro, Valentina Za, Susan Fenton and Rod Nickel)
