German power company Uniper will seek meaningful compensation for its new 1,055 MW Datteln-4 supercritical coal-fired power plant project currently under construction near Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), which may be forced to be kept off the grid as part of the German government's plan to phase out coal-fired power generation.
The German government is considering shutting down nearly 5 GW of lignite-fired capacity to meet the country's 2030 climate goals and blocking the grid connection of the new coal-fired project. However, Uniper disagrees as its base case scenario is to complete the €1.5bn power plant, to commission it in 2020 and run it until 2038.
In January 2019, the German Coal Commission agreed to phase-out coal-fired power generation by 2038 at the latest and proposed €40bn in compensation for affected coal-mining regions. The first measure involves the shut down of 12.7 GW of capacity by 2022 with compensation yet to be agreed upon. This corresponds to 24 different power plants from operators such as RWE, Uniper, EnBW and Vattenfall. Coal-fired power capacity would more than halve to 17 GW by 2030. The coal exit could be completed by 2035; the decision to accelerate the process will be made in 2032.