BERLIN,  (Reuters) - Russian spies are targeting the  German energy sector to help Russian firms gain commercial  advantages, the head of Germany’s domestic counter-espionage  unit said yesterday.

“The Russian intelligence services, keeping up with their  government’s changing information needs, have intensified  efforts in recent years to investigate German firms illegally,”  Burkhard Even, told Die Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

The director of Counter-Intelligence at the Federal Office  for the Protection of the Constitution, said the spying was  aimed mostly at information on alternative and renewable energy  and efforts to increase efficiency. European energy interests,  diversification plans, and Germany’s economic situation were  also espionage targets.

Last month Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble also noted,  when presenting his ministry’s 2008 security report, that Russia  and China were stepping up espionage efforts and Internet  attacks on German companies.

Last year a German court convicted a former employee of  European aeronautic defence and space company EADS of selling  information on civilian helicopters to Russian intelligence.

Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), smaller than  its military intelligence service but successor to part of the  Soviet KGB, is the body analysts say covers economic matters.

The head of the unit, Mikhail Fradkov, is a former Prime  Minister and economics expert appointed by former President  Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB spy during the Cold War.