German power provider RWE says it's changing how it does business to respond to sector transformations. Photo by Reinhard Tiburzy/Shutterstock

ESSEN, Germany, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- German energy company RWE announced it was reconfiguring how it does business to work through what it said was a "massive" energy market transformation.

The company announced board directors approved a plan to simplify how it operates in the German market to move in reaction to industry trends.


"The massive transformation of the energy market in recent years, and in RWE's core markets in particular, have posed major challenges for RWE, and the company has to be able to adapt accordingly," the company said.

The German government in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan started taking steps to phase out nuclear power. Wind power generated on land and offshore is now emerging as one of the main pillars of Germany's new energy mix.

RWE, the country's largest utility, said it was restricting management along conventional, retail, grid and renewable operations while at the same time eliminating redundancies on board committees and reigning in its subsidiaries.

Peter Terium, the company's chief executive officer, said the changes would make RWE fit better in what he said was a new energy world.

"The new RWE will be faster and more flexible -- as the far-reaching changes on the energy market demand," he said in a statement. "We are one RWE and we want to stay that way. But without change, we cannot make the group future-proof. Now is the time to pull even closer together."