MG Energy+ Celebrates 5 Years of Successful Work and Partnerships
As our company had its 5th anniversary last week on Friday, this blog post covers the success story of MG Energy+ and how the company developed over the past five years.
2011 – 2013 – The early beginnings
Founded by Dr. Günter Maier in 2011, MG Energy+ Investment and Advisory GmbH focuses on investment management, transaction and project support as well as asset management in the energy Sector. MG Energy+ is a consulting company for the energy – and renewable energy business, providing management- and advisory services for corporations, banks, investors, and research institutions. The partners and team members of MG Energy+ combine as generalists profound technical-, economical-, and contractual expertise in energy and renewable energy.
Within the first two years of business, MG Energy+ and its partners focused on project consulting, working for different renewable energy projects in as well as outside of Europe. Key projects ranged from business development strategies within the renewables sector for large European corporations to very specific technical and economic evaluations of operational power plants.
In 2013, MG Energy+ started to offer interim management to its clients based on the strong demand, which presented itself, and further developments in 2013 resulted in MG Energy+ providing the Managing Director of AMIC Energy Management GmbH.
AMIC is a private equity and advisory firm focused on the European energy sector and was also ranked within the largest 15 cross-border acquisitions from
Austrian companies within 2014.
2014 – 2015 – Strengthening the interim management services
From 2014 to 2015, MG Energy+ provided the CEO for a European Independent Power Producer, based on an interim management contract. The client company was a renewable power producer having several hundred MW power capacity in operation. The key task within this company was the stabilization and restructuring of the Group of companies, executing cost optimization and divestments throughout the renewable power- and real estate portfolio.
Additionally, Günter Maier, Managing Director of MG Energy+ became a Lecturer for Sustainable Energy Systems at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.
Later on in 2014, MG Energy+ became part of a large energy- and infrastructure project in Tunisia, which will be on-going for the next 10-15 years.
In order to support and promote the interim management services offered by MG Energy+, an interim management mandate as Managing Director of an asset management company was established in 2014, providing technical and commercial performance improvement and management for PV power plants, which is still active.
2016 – Utility Business Models and the Rise of E-nable+
A very captivating chapter, shaping MG Energy+’s development and future is the industry development of the energy and renewable energy sector in-between 2011 and 2016.
The energy landscape changed fundamentally in the last years. Driven by volatile prices for oil, gas, and coal. The oil price traded at about 120 USD/bbl in January 2011 and showed it is lowest value in January 2016 at around 35 USD/bbl, increasing back to 50 USD/bbl as of today. The price variations have been influenced by the economic downturn, the cool down of emerging markets such as China and India but also particularly by the exploitation of shale gas and shale oil in the US. Suddenly the US became an oil export country again and the oversupply and price decrease of oil and gas led also to a nose dive of the coal price, leading to the bizarre situation that in parallel to renewable power plants, coal fired power plants became economical in Europe again and forced out new gas-fired power plants, which are out of money and stand still all over Europe.
Some renewable energy sources like wind and solar became increasingly competitive, with photovoltaic (PV) solar energy showing more than 4 times lower costs of investments and generation. MGE believes that the floor in the reduction of PV generation costs is not reach yet as the solar industry is just at the beginning of consolidation and impact of upscaling effects, while the technology development accelerates constantly.
“I remember that in 2006 when I started with renewable energy, energy companies and utilities did not take renewable energy very serious and definitely did not see RE as a threat to their traditional business model.” Günter Maier
This positive development of Renewable Energy technologies is one of the key drivers of the current strategy of MG Energy+. At MGE we focus on offering highest possible value to our customers. We believe that in addition to the rise of renewable energy and the digitalisation of the energy industry, the internet as market place for products and services will substantially change the way how energy project owners, investors and financers will identify and select their assets and investments and how they will dedicate resources and expertise to such projects. The possibility to flexibly provide services to customers around the world via the digital network paves the way for location-independent service provision and value creation.
In using such possibilities for creating benefits for our customers, we’ve founded with E-nable+ (https://portal.e-nable.eu) the one-stop for energy projects, with the vision to enable capital deployment and the provision of resources and expertise per mouse click.