MILAN, July 29 (Reuters) - Europe's biggest utility Enel trimmed its guidance for the year on Wednesday citing currency effects, after posting a slight increase in earnings in the first half to beat expectations.

In a statement the Italian power group said ordinary core income in the period rose 0.4% to 8.794 billion euros, boosted by its green energy and trading businesses.

Enel, which controls Spanish utility Endesa and has extensive business interests in Latin America, said it did not expect Latin America currencies to recover by year end.

It said it now expected full-year core earnings to be around 18 billion euros from previous guidance of around 18.6 billion euros.

Ordinary net profit for the year will be 5.0-5.2 billion euros compared with earlier guidance of around 5.4 billion euros.

Enel said that despite the very challenging environment related to the COVID-19 health emergency, it had stepped up moves to decarbonise its business.

Total coal capacity had fallen to below 10 gigawatts for the first time ever during the first half while 800 megawatts of new green capacity had been added, it said.

In the first six months Enel invested 4.1 billion euros, more than 80% of which was in green energy and networks.

According to its last business plan in November, the company will spend 28.7 billion euros to 2022, mostly on grids and clean energy.

($1 = 0.8493 euros) (Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; editing by James Mackenzie, Kirsten Donovan)