RWE: Further Plant Closures Possible

Germany utility RWE does not rule out shuttering more power stations in Europe if price pressure continues to undermine generation margins and regulatory measures fail to help the bedraggled sector, a company official said.

"Further closures are possible," the head of the RWE generation subsidiary, Matthias Hartung, told Reuters on the sidelines of an industry conference on Tuesday.

RWE, one of Europe's biggest electricity producers, last week posted bleak nine-month results on the back of weak prices, mild winter weather and increasing competition from expanding renewable energy producers.

Hartung said that RWE hopes wholesale power prices have reached the bottom of a trough. They have fallen by a quarter since the beginning of 2013.

He also said that policymakers must urgently discuss the future of the market design, where utilities hope for so-called capacity payments that would allow them to keep open plants on standby against a fee, to offer a secure supply at times that renewable energy cannot be produced .

"Politicians need to put the market on the right track," he said.

(Reporting by Vera Eckert and Tom Kaeckenhoff, editing by Arno Schuetze)