Scottish & Southern Energy seeks wind farm funding

Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 May 2009 18.19 BST

Scottish & Southern Energy is in talks with the European Bank of Investment to raise funds for new wind projects in Britain while also admitting it might make a bid for parts of the electricity distribution network and is still interested in possible nuclear sites.
"We need to finance some of our future capital expenditure. We are in discussions with the EIB on that and are hopeful to reach a successful conclusion," said the chief executive, Ian Marchant.
He added that it was hard to predict whether household gas and electricity bills would rise or fall over the longer term, but pledged not to raise prices for 18 months.
"We are seeing quite low spot prices [of wholesale gas], which could imply retail prices should come down, but we are also seeing high forward prices – suggesting bills could go up," he said. Marchant was speaking as SSE announced a massive drop in pre-tax profits to £53.3m from £1.08bn last year due to a range of one-off items and accounting changes. Profit before exceptional items and certain re-measurements grew to £1.21bn, up from £1.18bn in the previous year.