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The coal-fired power plant Moorburg in Hamburg
Photo: imago images / Jannis Große
The first coal piles are going offline: the Federal Network Agency has announced the decommissioning premiums for eleven power plant units.
The operators of the plants will receive a total of around 317 million euros.
As of January 1, 2021, you may no longer sell electricity from these systems.
This means that the Moorburg coal-fired power plant in Hamburg, which was only commissioned in 2015, will go offline.
The operator Vattenfall receives the switch-off bonus for both blocks.
The largest German electricity producer, RWE, is also awarded the contract for two hard coal power plants in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The large coal-fired generators Uniper and Steag have also won bids for power plants in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Many coal-fired power plants are no longer worthwhile
Germany wants to shut down all coal-fired power plants by 2038 at the latest to protect the climate.
Fixed shutdown dates and compensation amounts were negotiated with the lignite operators RWE and Leag.
For hard coal, where there are many different power plant operators, it was decided to use the tendering model.
The operators who demand the lowest amount per ton of CO2 avoided receive the surcharge for compensation.
For many utilities, operating such systems is no longer worthwhile.
This first tender for four gigawatts was significantly oversubscribed, the Bonn authority announced.
The average bid value is 66,259 euros per megawatt.
There will be further tenders in the coming years.
»Although the power plant (...) is one of the most modern in Germany, the early shutdown is in line with both the plans of the German government to reduce emissions from coal-fired power generation and Vattenfall's strategy of living without fossil fuels within a generation to enable, «said Vattenfall boss Anna Borg.
Vattenfall has invested around 2.8 billion in Moorburg
Ralf Schmidt Pleschka, coordinator of energy and climate policy at the green electricity supplier LichtBlick, said: “Today is a good day for the climate.
Because with the Moorburg-Aus one of the largest industrial and climate-political bad investments in the history of Hamburg will be corrected «.
However, it is scandalous that the taxpayers would now have to pay hundreds of millions to compensate for this "capital error of the Vattenfall Group and Hamburg politics."
Environmentalists have been raging against the hard coal power plant in the port of Hamburg for years.
The plant with an output of 1.6 gigawatts is the largest power plant in northern Germany.
Vattenfall has invested around 2.8 billion euros here.
The bidding period for the next auction is January 4, 2021, further bidding rounds are to follow - with lower compensation.
Overall, according to the network agency, the process should run until 2027 and move the operators to shut down coal plants of their own accord.
If too few bidders participate, the federal authority can then legally shut down hard coal-fired power plants.
There is then no longer any compensation.
Icon: The mirror
caw / dpa / Reuters
