MILAN (Reuters Breakingviews) - Enel’s green lead looks hard to beat. Since Chief Executive Francesco Starace took over in May 2014, the Italian utility’s shares have delivered a total return of 180% to investors, almost four times that of the STOXX Europe 600 Index. Among private companies it has also become the world’s biggest clean energy player by installed capacity. As the green power market continues to grow, so will Enel. The group’s journey from dull utility to a $105 billion green supermajor has been remarkable. Born in the 1960s out of the fusion of a myriad domestic players, it has surpassed oil group Eni to become Italy’s biggest listed company and has operations in some 30 countries. It has also been a major source of dividends for the Italian state, which owns a 24% stake. That is chiefly thanks to Starace’s early bet that solar and wind power would become cheap and pose a threat to polluting fossil fuels. When he took the helm, the 65-year-old energy veteran had already led Enel’s renewable arm. That was well before sustainability became the investor mantra that it is today. Still, Starace won’t stick around forever. And oil majors have aggressive wind and solar expansion plans. BP, for example, is targeting 50 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030 - more than both the 49 GW Enel has now and the capacity of other current big players like Electricite de France and Spain’s Iberdrola. Enel therefore needs a moat. Starace’s latest strategic plan offers some defence. He aims to nearly treble Enel’s wind and solar capacity to 145 GW by 2030, outstripping Iberdrola’s goal to double it to around 60 GW. That sounds less extreme given the breakneck rate of growth in renewable energy. The group will still only have a 4% global market share, excluding China, by 2030. Enel’s clean-energy ambitions seem more credible than those of oil majors. Its expansion plan includes a 55 GW “mature pipeline” of new capacity by 2025, while BP’s targets only call for 20 GW of agreed projects. And it is spending $192 billion over the next decade, against BP’s goal to build up to $5 billion annually by 2030. Unlike oil interlopers, Enel is already in the renewables generation business, rather than trying to learn new tricks. Instead of crude production, its non-renewable generation operations are regulated power networks. Having 44% of EBITDA from these makes it easier to borrow more cheaply. Enel not only has a head start now, but is lucky with its competitors.