Trump will not deter innogy from investing in US: CEO

Geoff Cutmore
Martin Leissl | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A Donald Trump presidency will not deter energy company Innogy from investing in the U.S, Peter Terium, its CEO, said on Wednesday.

"The move from coal to gas was not by policy, but it was just that shale gas was cheaper than coal, and the move towards renewables is because wind onshore, in certain areas… (has) become much more cheaper than any conventional generation can be," Terium said to CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Innogy is a subsidiary of energy company RWE and is focused on three main areas: renewables, grid and infrastructure, and retail.

According to the business, it provides energy to roughly 16 million power customers and seven million gas customers across 11 European countries.

Speaking on the possibility of punitive action from President-elect Trump against the renewables sector, Terium added that he did not think any punitive action could "be any more bigger than the market."

"All the wind parks are being built locally, maintained locally and operated locally, so it really fits into the policy that he (Trump) also has set to enhance local value creation," Terium said.

Since Trump won the presidency last year, concerns have been raised that the U.S. may change its attitude towards the historic Paris Agreement.

In 2015, after days of painstaking and fraught negotiations, world leaders at the COP21 summit in Paris agreed to make sure global warming stayed "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and to "pursue efforts" to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

Terium, however, indicated he was confident the agreement and the move to renewables would hold up because the agreement reached at COP21 was "not only a top down policy."

"You see certain regions, whether it's California or whether it's some of the eastern US states, or whether it is regions that are bottom up, making the move to renewables… revolution never has started at the top, it always comes from the bottom and it's not going to stop."

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