Company History

When VERBUND was founded in 1947 as the "Österreichische Elektrizitätswirtschafts-AG" on the basis of the 2nd Nationalisation Act, electricity too was a scarce commodity in Austria. In this situation, the legislature assigned VERBUND the task of rebuilding and expanding Austria's electricity system. 
With the help of the Marshall Plan, important projects such as the hydropower plants at Kaprun and Ybbs-Persenbeug could be implemented during the first few years. 

The "Roaring Sixties" saw further large-scale power plants join the grid: Aschach (Upper Austria) and Wallsee-Mitterkirchen (Upper/Lower Austria), two large Danube power plants, as well as Mayrhofen (Tyrol), the main stage of what would later be Austria's most powerful storage power plant group.
Nuclear power seemed to promise a way out of the energy crisis in the 1970s; however, it was never implemented in Austria. The Zwentendorf nuclear power plant was scarcely finished when the population voted against its commissioning in a referendum in 1978. As a result, the government incorporated the renunciation of nuclear power in the Constitution – this represented a major rupture in the energy policies of the Second Austrian Republic.

Both the government and the electricity industry quickly opted for greater energy security through the expansion of hydropower. So three Danube power plants were built in the Seventies, including the largest in Altenwörth (Lower Austria), as well as the Malta (Carinthia) storage power plant, which has the highest dam in Austria.

1988 was an important year for VERBUND, as 49% of the company was privatised in the course of entering the stock market, and VERBUND took over the federal government's shares in the special purpose companies (such as Donaukraft, Tauernkraft or Draukraft).

For Austria's electricity industry, the building freeze of the Hainburg power plant project in 1984 seemed to mark the end of large-scale power plant construction – particularly in the hydropower sector.

By the end of the 1990s, VERBUND acted according to still-future EU regulations, such as the spinning off of the business sectors for the "production" and "transmission" of electricity to Austrian Power Grid (APG) in line with corporate law. Even prior to the turn of the millennium, VERBUND was well-positioned for a complete opening up of the electricity market, which was implemented in Austria in 2001 and which became an EU-wide reality in 2007.

Towards the middle of the decade, VERBUND had business relationships in more than 20 countries and had more than 13 subsidiaries or shareholdings at its disposal in Europe, as well as one in Turkey.

In 2007, VERBUND expanded its activities with further renewable energy sources and started to make massive investments, especially in wind power.
The global economic crises and massive upheavals in the energy market affected VERBUND as well. In particular the reduction in wholesale prices for electricity, coupled with a drop in demand due to a weaker industry, led to a decline in the group result in 2010. As a result, VERBUND strengthened its focus on the core markets in Austria and Germany, on energy production from water and wind power, as well as on new services. At the end of 2010, VERBUND purchased the Bavarian hydropower plants on the Inn River, and in 2013, VERBUND exchanged its shares in Turkish assets for the shares of the cross-border power plants on the Inn and the Salzach Rivers.

Today VERBUND is greatly expanding its offerings in energy-related services and energy efficiency products, and is offering innovative solutions for domestic industrial and commercial enterprises as well as for private households. In the production segment, attention is being focussed on increasing efficiency and on the comprehensive ecological enhancement of all power plants.