September 2025 |
250909 |
ENERGY CHRONICLE |
The federally owned energy company Uniper has sold the Datteln 4 hard coal-fired power plant to the Swiss ResInvest Group a.s. As it announced on September 19, the sales agreement also includes the associated district heating supply facilities for several thousand households in the northern Ruhr area. No details of the sale price were disclosed.
The sale of Datteln 4 is part of the requirements that the company must fulfill under EU state aid law after the EU Commission approved the stabilization package for Uniper on December 20, 2022. The requirements also stipulate that the federal government must reduce its 99 percent stake in Uniper to a maximum of 28 percent plus one share by 2028 at the latest (221211).
The Datteln 4 power plant was commissioned in 2020 with a net electrical output of 1,052 megawatts. It was the last new coal-fired power plant to be built in Germany. The new unit was intended to replace three older units at E.ON's Datteln power plant from 2011 onwards. Construction began in 2007. However, completion was then delayed by nine years because the project was successfully challenged in court due to several violations of applicable regulations and, in addition, structural damage occurred that had to be repaired first (180511).
One year after it finally went into operation (200515)
the validity of the underlying development plan was also declared
invalid by the court because the Datteln City Council had adopted an
incorrect site selection at the regional planning level (210811).
However, this ruling did not affect the immission control permit,
which was also temporarily controversial. As a result, the Datteln 4
power plant was allowed to continue operating, even though it is
actually an “illegal construction” due to the subsequent invalidity of
the development plan.