At the beginning of 2021, the Swedish energy company Vattenfall surprisingly took its coal-fired power plant Moorburg off the grid – after only six years of operation.
Apparently, the plant could no longer be operated economically, after long conflicts with environmental protection associations and court proceedings.
The city of Hamburg wants to turn the strategically important site on the Elbe into a hub for the northern German energy transition. Following demolition of the power plant – known as “dismantling” in the energy industry – large electrolysis plants are to be built there. According to the plan, the existing connection to the extra-high voltage grid will in the future supply northern German wind power, which the electrolysers will use to produce “green” hydrogen, storable energy for many possible applications.
Michael Westhagemann (non-party), Hamburg’s Senator for Economics and Innovation, expects RWE, one of Germany’s leading energy companies, to play a key role at the Moorburg site in the future. “RWE is very interested in negotiating the takeover of the decommissioned Moorburg hard-coal-fired power plant from Vattenfall. After dismantling the power plant, RWE could build a huge electrolysis plant there with a capacity of up to 700 megawatts,” Westhagemann told WELT. “Its operator would then be a consortium of RWE, Shell and Hamburger Energiewerke. We are talking about this with RWE.”
He also said the location at the Port of Hamburg makes the site interesting for the energy business: “For RWE, the Port of Hamburg should be interesting as a future hub for an energy industry based on renewable energies and on hydrogen produced from renewable sources.” It is conceivable, he said, that RWE would take over not only the power plant but also the land on which it stands: “The city of Hamburg would welcome RWE as a strategic investor in the energy turnaround.”
RWE, which is headquartered in Essen, denied and did not confirm these statements, saying, “RWE regularly examines various location options for activities of the company. We ask for your understanding that we do not wish to comment on individual, possible locations.” The group has been making a shift away from fossil fuels to renewables for several years. The transformation is far from complete – in the Rhenish coalfield, for example, RWE still operates lignite-fired power plants and the associated opencast mines. However, new investments are being made in renewable energies, and 50 billion euros have been earmarked for this by 2030. RWE plans to commission its new Kaskasi offshore wind farm off Helgoland in 2022.
Vattenfall, whose German headquarters are in Berlin, will probably withdraw completely from the Moorburg site. The company neither confirmed nor denied negotiations with RWE: “The Moorburg site is of interest to market participants; we do not comment on talks.” The company is currently preparing to “dismantle” the plant: “A sale of the site was always a possible scenario in our considerations of the future of Moorburg.”
What is already clear so far is that the so-called “Green Hydrogen Hub consortium” wants to build an electrolysis plant with a capacity of 100 megawatts at the Moorburg site by 2025. The consortium includes Hamburger Energiewerke, the Shell energy group and the Japanese industrial group Mitsubishi. Vattenfall is holding “constructive talks with the city of Hamburg and the consortium about acquiring the site and coordinating the dismantling and construction of the planned electrolyzer.” However, Vattenfall itself will not invest in the project.
