German Uniper Confirms Coal Plant Closures (Update)
(Adds comment on other plants)
German utility Uniper is to close 2.9 GW of hard coal-fired generating capacity by no later than 2025, it said January 30. Of the total, just over half will come from three units at the Scholven plant in Gelsenkirchen and the Wilhelmshaven plant, by end 2022. Germany has undertaken to close all coal and lignite plants by 2038.
Another 1.4 GW will go at Staudinger and Heyden power stations by 2025 at the latest, it says. Under its "ambitious and voluntary plan," the last remaining hard coal-fired power plant in the Uniper portfolio in Germany will be the Datteln 4, which is connected to the electricity grid and undergoing final testing. Uniper and the government had discussed financial compensation to avoid using the plant but this idea has now been dropped
It said it is planning new capacity to replace them, including modern, combined heat and power plants fired by gas and producing industrial and district heating and electricity. Uniper is also planning to develop solutions that produce hydrogen on an industrial scale. Uniper also mothballed some of its gas-fired capacity a few years ago as the market conditions at the time were unfavourable. Since then the gas price has tumbled.
CEO Andreas Schierenbeck said Uniper's objective is to "make a proactive and constructive contribution to the achievement of carbon reduction targets and to the swift and sustainable phaseout of coal-fired power generation in Germany. We want to send a signal that the discussions of recent years have now led to action."
He said the actions would provide planning security to employees at the facilities affected and give our company the financial and structural flexibility to focus on important, sustainable projects for the future.
Uniper is one of the five companies financially backing Nord Stream 2, which will deliver some 55bn m³/yr from Russia to northern Germany starting in about a year's time. Germany is also planning two LNG import terminals.
Uniper’s other plants
Uniper told NGW January 31 that it was too early to give a timetable for all its plant closures. “In general the German coal exit act provides for Germany to phase out coal by 2038. According to the law, this date is to be reviewed several times: 2026, 2029 and 2032. Our one lignite fired power plant in east Germany will run until 2034 – this is how the federal government's exit path for lignite envisages it. We currently assume that Datteln, as the most modern and efficient coal-fired power plant, will be one of the last plants to go off the grid. It would not be serious to anticipate the outcome of the planned reviews today.”
Uniper’s Irsching 4 and 5 gas plants are operated within the framework of the so-called grid reserve regulation. They are only used when their power is needed to stabilise the grid. Whether Irsching 4/5 can operate in the market again (no longer be in reserve) will be decided in due course on the basis of the price and market situation, the company said.