Our employees and the staff of our partner firms often work in places with special Health and Safety requirements. In particular, this includes workplaces such as our mines, the technical side of our power plants and our wind farms. We believe that it is the right of both our own employees and the staff of companies working for us to return home as healthy as when they arrived at work. We minimise the risk of workplace accidents and health hazards by maintaining a comprehensive occupational safety management programme and a workplace safety culture. We provide intensive training for our employees in all accident-prevention measures and create awareness for responsible behaviour in the area of health and safety by talking about these issues and keeping our employees informed on a regular basis.

Ensuring high safety standards is not just for the good of our employees, but also for the benefit of local residents. We remain in ongoing dialogue with local residents for this purpose and also run regular drills to ensure constant readiness to act where necessary. In addition, the executive management of the Group works in close consultation with the relevant departments to keep improving our safety measures and hazard prevention plans in the event of any outages or other incidents. Expansion and enhancement of our prevention measures is particularly important in this context. The local fire services, hazard prevention authorities and the relevant district councils are included in this process.  Should an incident occur at one of our power plant premises which could pose a risk to the neighbourhood, our in-house alarm and officially approved risk-avoidance plan as well as the hazard prevention plan of the relevant emergency response authority immediately comes into force.

As a major electricity generator, RWE forms an integral part of the critical infrastructure in each region. This makes us particularly conscious of our importance to society as a whole, which is why (Cyber) Security Management is a central management function of RWE. A significant incident such as a cyber attack on power plants could potentially lead to widespread supply outages which would have a very negative effect on the everyday life of the general public, the health and safety of those working in the power plants or living in the surrounding area and the financial future of the company. This is why we need to prepare accordingly by providing suitable planning and training for a broad spectrum of potential incidents – including some of the highly unlikely events which nevertheless have very grave consequences. Prevention of such incidents is therefore the primary goal.

Constant risk monitoring helps us identify our critical assets and take suitable technical and organisational measures to protect them. In order to be prepared for such cyberattacks and have the ability to respond to them, the threat level is constantly analysed and assessed. As well as online training, posters and articles, live hacking events are also an effective tool to raise awareness among our employees.

The reporting channels to the authorities involved are prescribed by law. We work together with them to prepare for any emergency scenarios. Emergency response drills at the local level generally take place in association with the relevant local agencies, such as the police and fire service.