Compensation payments are currently planned for power plants with a total capacity of 2.5 gigawatts (GW) that will be turned off by the end of 2022. Additional payments of some 700 million Euros will be made to finance the early retirement of about 3,000 coal workers.
After months of talks, Germany’s multi-stakeholder coal exit commission had agreed to phase out the fossil fuel by 2038 at the latest. Early on, RWE had signaled it could shoulder the early shutdowns in western Germany, due to its greater economic alternatives than in the East.
Quarrels about Datteln-4
Uniper, Germany’s largest utility, had propose to shut down or convert to gas all its entire fleet of coal power stations in return for putting online its new hard-coal plant Datteln-4 before summer 2020.
For power stations already built but not yet operation, such as Datteln-4, the German coal exit commission had initially recommended a negotiated solution so they are not taken into operation. However, Eastern German states, that are bound to be hard hit by the coal exit, find this ruling unfair and want the new Datteln power unit not to be put into operation.
Trying to resolve matters, Chancellor Angela Merkel has invited all coal-state government heads to a meeting in the chancellery on 15 January.