STEAG

Kommunale Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG (KSBG) has sold its stake in the energy company STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, to the Spanish infrastructure investor Asterion Industrial Partners. The boards of the owners have given their mutual consent to this and the contract has been signed and notarised accordingly (signing). The transaction volume amounts to approximately 2.6 bn €. This amount corresponds to the enterprise value for 100 % of the shares in STEAG. After deduction of the liabilities, the consortium will still receive a substantial amount. The net inflow to the former owners is also still dependent on STEAG’s 2023 annual result. The sales process (closing) is expected to be completed by December 2023.

STEAG comprises the two business units STEAG Power GmbH and Iqony GmbH. STEAG Power operates hard coal-fired power plants at six locations in Germany. Its share of total electricity generation in Germany is around 5 %. Iqony offers solutions for the decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitalisation of energy supply. Iqony focuses on renewable energies and bridging technologies that can also be used in a climate-neutral way in the future. In addition to solar, wind and geothermal energy, the portfolio also includes hydrogen solutions, storage technologies, engineering services and modern gas-fired power plants that will be climate-neutral in the future through the use of hydrogen.

The municipal utility consortium KSBG initially took over 51 % of STEAG in 2011 and the remaining shares in 2014. At the time, the company was facing major economic challenges. After a successful restructuring and realignment of STEAG, however, the owners would have faced a considerable need for further investment. In view of this development, the owners had decided to sell the company in 2022. In a bidding process lasting several months, Asterion prevailed with the economically best offer. Moreover, the declared goal is to preserve STEAG as a whole. In coal-fired power generation, STEAG’s power plants continue to make an essential contribution to ensuring security of supply in the Federal Republic of Germany and Europe. Further growth is expected for the future technologies bundled in Iqony. (KSBG/Si.)

The STEAG Group, Essen/Germany, which since the beginning of the year has been divided into two separately operating companies, Iqony GmbH and STEAG Power GmbH, has presented its current Group sustainability report. In it, the energy company documents its commitment and guidelines in the areas of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). Under the keyword “ESG”, a comprehensive set of rules has emerged in recent years to classify the actions of companies according to the criteria of sustainability and good corporate management. The central message of STEAG’s new sustainability report is the target of becoming a climate-neutral company by 2040 – five years earlier than required by law.

In addition to detailed explanations of the extent to which the company follows the relevant ESG criteria in everything it does, the report also provides information on how far STEAG also complies with other guidelines and standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations. “Long before ESG criteria were established and defined, we as an employer endeavored, out of social responsibility, to guarantee good working and living conditions for all our employees in Germany and abroad. This ranges from collective wage agreements, which are an expression of the appreciation of our employees’ work, and strict and consistently monitored occupational health and safety regulations, to benefits that make it easier to reconcile family and career in all phases of life and promote involvement in the community,” explains Andreas Reichel, Chairman of the STEAG Management Board and the Group’s Labor Director.

In addition to this important topic, the new sustainability report attaches particular importance to reducing emissions: “We have used the past few months to develop perspectives across all areas of the STEAG Group for achieving climate neutrality by 2040,” says Reichel. This not only includes energy generation from hard coal in Germany, which will come to an end during this decade, but also affects all areas of activity in the Group, including the vehicle fleet and energy management in the company buildings.

“We have always stated that without the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, we would have already largely completed our own coal phase-out last fall. Contrary to our own plans, we have entered the “extra time” period with our plants because they, at the express request of government, are currently making an important contribution to ensuring security of supply in the face of a possible natural gas shortage. However, this temporary support for society does not in any way mean that we are abandoning the goal of phasing out coal as such,” emphasizes Reichel.

By setting a climate neutrality target for its own company, STEAG, in the form of its new Group member Iqony, created at the beginning of the year, is positioning itself as an active shaper and enabler of a successful energy transition in Germany and beyond. “From the engineering and energy management expertise that has grown for more than eight decades, Iqony develops individual and tailor-made solutions for the decarbonization of industry and municipalities,” says Ralf Schiele, who is responsible for the Market and Technology divisions on the STEAG Management Board and also acts as COO of Iqony. “By successfully making our own company climate neutral, we are documenting to our customers and partners in a special way our competence and ability to help them on their way to “Net Zero”,” Schiele summarizes.

“In addition,” adds STEAG’s Chief Financial Officer Ralf Schmitz, “we are also taking account of the increasing importance of ESG criteria in our business relationships with banks, insurers and investors.” (STEAG/Si.)

At its meeting on 25th January 2023, the Supervisory Board of STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, appointed Ralf Schiele (Figure 1) as a member of the Management Board of STEAG GmbH for a further three years. Schiele has been a member of the STEAG management since October 2020 and is responsible for the Market and Technology division. His appointment as Chief Operating Officer (COO) now runs until the end of September 2026. Schiele has worked for the STEAG Group for 20 years. Andreas Reichel, who is Chairman of the Management Board of STEAG GmbH and HR Director, had already been reappointed in 2022 with effect until the end of July 2026.

STEAG GmbH has been acting as the holding company of the STEAG Group since the beginning of 2023. STEAG has grouped the green growth businesses of the Essen-based energy company together in the new Iqony GmbH, which was launched on 1st January 2023. In the new setup, STEAG’s traditional coal business operates under the umbrella of STEAG Power GmbH. The three STEAG directors Reichel, Schiele and Ralf Schmitz are also directors of the subsidiaries Iqony GmbH and STEAG Power GmbH. (STEAG/Si.)

STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, is returning both its hard coal fired power plants Bexbach and Weiher in Saarland from the grid reserve to the market. With a net rated capacity of 726 MW, the Bexbach power plant (Figure 1) is the largest STEAG plant in Germany, it’s sister power plant in Weiher has a capacity of 656 MW. Together, both power plants reliably supply the equivalent of up to four million households with electricity. Furthermore, STEAG has decided to keep the power plants Bergkamen (717 MW) in the Ruhr area as well as the power plant blocks MKV (179 MW) and HKV (211 MW) in Völklingen-Fenne, Saarland, who originally were designated for permanent decommission by 31st October 2022, further in the market. The energy company has informed the Federal Grid Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) and transmission grid-operator Amprion about these decisions taken. Power Exchange EEX has been informed, too.

“We as STEAG can make a significant contribution to save natural gas within the current energy crisis,” says Andreas Reichel, Chairman of the Management Board of STEAG. Altogether, the four power plants in the Saarland and Ruhr area now returning to the market and which are affected by the exemptions of the Act on the Maintenance of Substitute Power Stations (EKBG), have a net rated capacity just under 2,500 MW.

“Arithmetically, our power plants can replace approximately a third of the power, that in 2021 had been generated in natural gas fired power plants,” adds Ralf Schiele, COO of STEAG, responsible for “market and technology” within the management board.

The first of the four power plants to return to the market was Bexbach on 28th October 2022; thereby fulfilling its designated task within the current energy crisis: reduce natural gas consumption in power generation. Its sister power plant Weiher, located in the Saarland town of Quierschied, followed on 31st October 2022. Both the two power plants Bergkamen and Völklingen-Fenne, originally designated for permanent decommission, stay in the market beyond 30th October 2022. All of the four power plants are planned to operate in the market until spring 2024 within the legal framework of the EKBG.

This became possible thanks to the efforts to secure a sufficient hard coal supply. “The past few weeks have been stressful and challenging for our employees,” says Reichel. Together with logistics service providers and the German government, solutions have been found to overcome the existing transport bottlenecks on the railways. “In the upshot, we are very relieved that the federal government has taken the right course here,” says Reichel.

The new arrangement provides for fuel transport by rail to be given priority over other rail traffic whenever the permanent operation of a power plant can otherwise no longer be guaranteed. Since the beginning of October, STEAG has been able to build up the fuel stocks needed for a return to the market, which are much larger than for reserve operations.

Originally, theEKBG even stipulated a fuel quantity that would be sufficient to operate the plants at full load for 30 days. In the view of power plant operators, this minimum stockpiling requirement, which is far removed from practice, has now been significantly relaxed by the German government. Since the passage of the EKBG into law in July, only two hard coal fired power plants have returned to the market.

“Without the demand-based priority regulation for hard coal transport over other rail traffic, the earlier return of the Bexbach power plant to the market would hardly have been possible,” Schiele sums up the demanding logistical starting point for the power plants.

Indeed, the rail freight system was not prepared for a restart of hard coal fired power plants after the phase-out of coal-fired power generation in Germany, which was enshrined in law in 2020. “Transport companies and rail operators had adjusted their capacity of locomotives, warehouses and wagons to reflect the new market situation. As a result, there is also currently a shortage of traindrivers. If a reliable fuel supply for the hard coal fired power plants was to be organized and security of electricity supply ensured in the current energy crisis,the tasks involved were and still are highly challenging,” Stephan Riezler, who heads STEAG’s trading department and is responsible for fuel management in that function, explains.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that, e. g., with regard to the Bergkamen power plant site, which is supplied by ship, the low water levels of the rivers also caused a tense supply situation into the autumn. “In the case of inland shipping, too, less transport capacity has been available recently following the decision to phase out coal. Thankfully, however, the situation has eased here due to the recent rise in river levels,” says Riezler. The supply of STEAG’s power plant sites supplied by ship is therefore secured.

Ensuring reliable transport logistics from the international ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam to the power plant sites in Saarland was just one of several challenges that STEAG had to overcome in the past few weeks.

Especially, the two power plants Bergkamen and Völklingen-Fenne had to be technically overhauled. At the same time, it was necessary to ensure that sufficient personnel would be available at both sites beyond the designated decommissioning date to be able to operate the power plants as required. “Retirements were postponed, we were able to persuade employees who had changed their careers to stay on, and we recruited new staff – as far as they were available on the labor market,” says Reichel, who also holds the position of Labour Director at STEAG.

Thanks to these measures, the continued operation of the Bergkamen and Völklingen-Fenne power plants could also be secured in terms of personnel. However, the staffing level at the Völklingen-Fenne site did not allow for double-unit operation. “Therefore, only one of the two units will be on the grid at the Völklingen-Fenne site at a time,” says Ralf Schiele.

The fact that the market return of Bexbach and Weiher as well as the market retention of Bergkamen and Völklingen-Fenne is now succeeding in time for the start of the heating season despite all organizational adversities is the result of a united team effort by the STEAG workforce. “STEAG and its employees are justifiably proud of this success,” adds Reichel. (STEAG/Si.)

STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, sells a large part of the shares in its power plant on the Philippine island of Mindanao. The buyer is co-shareholder Aboitiz Power Corp (APC). STEAG had already announced last year that it wanted to sell its stake and initiated a sales process. As part of this process, Aboitiz has now exercised its right of first refusal.

The corresponding contracts were ceremonially signed on 19th October 2022 by the management of both contracting parties in Essen after the formal signing had already taken place on 15th September 2022 (Figure 1). The final closing of the transaction, which has a value of around 36 M US$, is still formally subject to the approval of several indirectly involved contractual partners and Philippine authorities.

“With the sale, STEAG is taking another important step on the way to complete decarbonization of the Group,” says Ralf Schiele, who is responsible for the Market and Technology divisions on the STEAG Management Board. The goal that STEAG has set itself is to become climate-neutral by 2037. The date has not been chosen arbitrarily: In 2037 STEAG will celebrate its one hundredth birthday.

For the time being, however, STEAG will remain a minority shareholder in STEAG State Power Inc. (SPI), the operating company of the Mindanao power plant. “Since the second co-shareholder, La Filipina Uy Gongco Corporation, has not exercised its proportional right of first refusal, we continue to hold around 15 % of the operating company, but are still keen to sell this minority share as well,” says Schiele.

However, STEAG will only remain invested in Mindanao until 2031 at the longest, as a build-operate-transfer model provided for the transfer of ownership of the power plant to the state-owned utility and grid operator Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) from the very beginning. (STEAG/Si.)

Part of the demonstration deliveries of carbon-reduced ammonia agreed in spring between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and various German energy and chemical companies has arrived in Hamburg; the tranche destined for STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, will follow timely. Representatives of ADNOC, STEAG and other companies as well as government representatives of the United Arab Emirates and the Federal Republic of Germany met in Hamburg to mark the occasion (Figure 1). The aim was not only to take stock, but also to discuss options for further cooperation. ADNOC and STEAG are currently negotiating an expansion of their cooperation.

“We are very pleased that the cooperation that began in the spring has developed so positively within such a short time,” says Andreas Reichel, CEO of STEAG. Especially in the face of the current crisis on the energy markets, this shows the declared will of the partners to quickly find solutions to secure the energy supply in the long term while not losing sight of the needs of climate protection.

For STEAG, ammonia offers various options for use: “On the one hand, ammonia is used in our hard coal-fired power plants in the denitrification of flue gases,” explains Ralf Schiele, who is responsible for the Market and Technology divisions in the STEAG management. In denitrification, ammonia is added to the flue gases, which then reacts with the nitrogen oxides contained in the flue gas to form water and nitrogen, thus purifying the flue gases.

“In addition, ammonia can also be a transport medium for hydrogen,“ Schiele continues. By means of the well-known Haber-Bosch process, ammonia can be produced synthetically from hydrogen and nitrogen. “Since the transport of ammonia is much easier than that of hydrogen, the material diversions via ammonia is a thoroughly sensible alternative,” says Schiele. The ammonia can then be split into the components nitrogen and hydrogen again at the customer’s production plant.

In view of the broad range of applications for ammonia, particularly in industry and energy generation, ADNOC and STEAG, together with other potential partners, are holding talks on intensifying the cooperation that was agreed during a delegation trip by Federal Minister of Economics and Climate Action Robert Habeck to the United Arab Emirates in March 2022. “It is now generally recognised that hydrogen is the key element for a successful energy transition. Consequently, STEAG is developing projects for green hydrogen production by means of electrolysis on an industrial scale at two locations,” says Reichel. However, in view of the foreseeably high demand for hydrogen, it is necessary to import hydrogen in addition to producing it domestically in order to meet the needs of customers in the long term.

Talks between the two partners are ongoing. “As soon as there is something concrete to report, we will of course make a statement,” said Reichel. At the same time, he thanked Federal Minister of Economics Habeck, whose delegation trip provided the initial impetus for the deepened cooperation that is now taking shape. (STEAG/Si.)

The STEAG Group, Essen/Germany, can look back on a successful six-month period. In the first half of the current business year, the energy group achieved consolidated sales of 2.41 bn €. Earnings before interest and taxes improved to 386.1 M €, almost doubling the result for the entire previous year. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) also increased significantly to 450 M €. “At the end of the first half of fiscal 2022, we are well ahead of our budget in all the relevant key figures and also well above the values for the entire previous year,” emphasizes Andreas Reichel, Chairman of the Management Board of STEAG GmbH.

The significant economic stabilization of the long-established energy company can be attributed to the power plant business, which improved disproportionately compared with the growth business in renewables in the first six months of 2022. The power plants in Germany have been in the black since September 2021. Just under a year ago, an unexpected price rally on the natural gas market caused electricity prices to rise for the first time. The situation on the energy markets tightened even further with the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and the drastic reduction in Russian natural gas supplies to Europe that followed shortly afterwards.

The end of coal-fired power generation in Germany, which has been enshrined in law since 2020, had placed an enormous burden on STEAG. In the 2020 balance sheet, the company had to absorb considerable impairments in relation toits domestic power plants and additionally high redundancy package costs for the loss of around 1,000 jobs in the Group.

“Now, thanks above all to the sound profits at the domestic power plants, we are again in a financial position to invest heavily in the expansion of STEAG’s green growth business, which employs around 2,500 people,” clarifies Ralf Schiele, Director for Market and Technology at STEAG. “We can offer these people good and secure prospects and, with the technical and energy market expertise we have acquired over eight decades, play a powerful role as an enabler of the energy transition.”

This is because the STEAG balance sheet has also become significantly stronger in the 2022 business year. Group equity, which was only slightly positive at 0.6 M € at the end of 2021, increased to 304 M € at the end of June 2022. At the same time, net financial debt fell to 303 M € – down from 485 M € at the end of 2021. “Our net gearing, expressed as the ratio of net financial debt to EBITDA, is currently well below one. That is a rock-solid figure,” according to Ralf Schmitz, Chief Transformation Officer and Chief Financial Officer of STEAG. The sharp rise in interest rates on the capital market also meant that accruals for pensions fell to below 900 M € – compared with just under 1.23 bn € at the end of 2021.

The medium-term business prospects for STEAG are also good. With the German Act on the Maintenance of Substitute Power Stations (EKBG), which recently came into force, the government is attempting to reduce Germany’s dangerous dependence on energy imports from Russia and to replace natural gas in electricity generation primarily with hard coal. The EKBG opens up the prospect for STEAG of continuing to operate four hard coal units profitably on the market until spring 2024.

STEAG is also making a significant contribution to the success of the energy transition. On the one hand, the company is ensuring reliable energy supplies so that the economy and society are not plunged into a crisis, especially this winter; on the other hand, STEAG is pressing ahead with projects in energy from renewables, hydrogen production and the decarbonization of industry. In addition to the major hydrogen projects in Duisburg-Walsum and Völklingen-Fenne, these include a large-scale battery project at a STEAG site and the utilization of waste heat from a waste treatment plant in the Saarland for the region’s district heating supply.

“STEAG is needed in the current energy crisis. That is why we have the firm intention of taking two hard coal fired power plants out of the grid reserve as provided for by the EKBG and keeping two further plants that were already on the verge of being decommissioned on line for longer. A total of 2,300 MW of power plant capacity will therefore be ready for operation and available on the market by November 2022 at the latest. No other power plant operator can make such a large contribution to gas savings,” emphasizes Reichel.

“STEAG alone can generate around a quarter of the energy previously generated in gas-fired power plants by returning its plants to the market,” Ralf Schiele adds.

The current business development does not change the fundamental decision by the STEAG shareholders to dispose of their holdings – on the contrary: In autumn 2021 the shareholders had already declared their long-term intention to withdraw from their involvement in STEAG. Now they have announced that they will bring forward the process of selling STEAG as a whole because of the good industry environment at the present time. “We are first sounding out the market to identify interest from potential purchasers. The findings from that will flow into our further deliberations and those of our municipal shareholders. Our task as the STEAG management is to enable our owners to sell their shares at an appropriate price in 2023,” emphasizes Schmitz. The actual sale process is expected to start in the autumn of 2022. (STEAG/Si.)

The headquarters of the energy company STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany (Figure 1), will gradually become climate-neutral in the coming months. The conversion to green, emission-free heating, which has already taken place, will now be followed by the installation of a photovoltaic (PV) system and an energy management system. In implementing this change, STEAG is drawing on in-house expertise from its subsidiaries STEAG Solar Energy Solutions (SENS) and OPTENDA GmbH. Together with the switch to green electricity, the measures achieve an annual saving in CO₂ emissions of around 1,550 t.

STEAG is intensifying its efforts to steadily improve the company’s own carbon footprint. Since 1990, STEAG has already reduced its own CO₂ emissions in Germany by more than 80 %. “The implementation of a detailed energy plan for our corporate headquarters in Essen is a further step along this path,” says Andreas Reichel, Chairman of the Management Board of STEAG, adding that the company is particularly proud that it can draw on in-house expertise to implement the plan.

Starting on 18th June 2022, the Würzburg-based PV specialists from STEAG’s subsidiary SENS is to install a rooftop solar system on an area of around 260 m² at STEAG´s headquarter in Essen. This has a capacity of around 60 KWp. The more than 150 solar panels required will be lifted onto the roof of the building by a truck-mounted crane.

“In terms of area, an even larger and therefore more powerful PV system would have been conceivable,” says Michael Kollorz from STEAG’s building management. But since the building, which was designed by the well-known architect Egon Eiermann at the end of the 1950s, is a listed building, a larger system was not feasible.

A total of four inverters are installed to ensure that the system achieves an optimum energy yield even in the case of partial shading. The system itself is connected directly to the building’s main distribution board in the basement via a 70 m fireproof cable. “With the PV system alone, we will avoid around 22 t of CO₂ emissions each year in the future,” says Bernd Retzlik, who supervised the implementation of the project at SENS.

The second important building block in improving the emission footprint of the building is the implementation of an energy management system. Here, too, STEAG can draw on expertise from its own ranks. STEAG’s digital subsidiary OPTENDA from Stuttgart has developed the “Energy Monitor”, a powerful and intuitive tool for energy monitoring and management. This is now also being used at STEAG´s headqurter in Essen.

The graphical display of the PV system’s performance data on a monitor in the building’s entrance area is only the most visible part of the new energy management system. “With the Energy Monitor, energy consumption can be easily recorded, analyzed and also optimized based on the results of those analyses,” says Sebastian Braun, Managing Director of OPTENDA. The name of the STEAG subsidiary stands for the task to which the young, digital team from Stuttgart has dedicated itself. “OPTimize ENergy by DAta”.

Thanks to the in-house software tool, the carbon footprint of the building is expected tobe improved by a further 61 t/a. “The conversion to a climate-neutral heat supply that has already taken place reduces the building’s emissions balance by a further 320 t/a,” says Kollorz. Finally, the bulk of the CO₂ savings comes from the switch to green electricity. “This measure accounts for at least another 1,150 t/a.

The energy plan for STEAG’s headquarters was developed by an interdisciplinary working group of management trainees. Traditionally, these junior managers go through a General Management Program (GMP) at STEAG. In that program, the participants work in teams to develop a project of their own design. “The idea behind the energy plan was to create a practical benefit for the climate and the environment. In addition, the project was also intended to symbolize the fundamental transformation of STEAG, which the company, which for decades stood primarily for energy generation from hard coal, is currently undergoing,” explains Florian Dauber, one of the members of the project group.

“With the implementation of the energy plan, STEAG is documenting its declared intention to gradually reduce its own emissions further and further,” says Ralf Schiele, who is responsible on the STEAG Board of Management for the Market and Technology divisions.

But even beyond the immediate climate benefit, the project has an important significance for STEAG: “In addition to the immediate effect for the benefit of our climate, the project is also an important technical reference for the solutions STEAG has to offer in the comprehensive decarbonization of industry and commerce,” says Schiele. (STEAG/Si.)

HydrOxy Walsum, STEAG’s hydrogen project in Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, is taking shape: Based on a favorable feasibility study for a water electrolysis plant with a capacity of up to 520 MW, jointly prepared by the project partners STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, and thyssenkrupp Steel AG, Duisburg/Germany, an agreement in the form of a memorandum of understanding has now been reached on the planned delivery of hydrogen and oxygen to thyssenkrupp Steel from the neighboring STEAG site in Duisburg-Walsum (Figure 1).

This will see the planned water electrolysis facility making an important contribution to the decarbonization of Europe’s largest steelmaking site. “Hydrogen is playing an increasingly important role in the energy transition,” says Ralf Schiele, STEAG director with responsibility for Market and Technology. He points out that hydrogen offers the opportunity to avoid CO₂ emissions in industry, the mobility sector and the energy industry, and thereby to achieve the targeted climate goals.

In the case of the steel industry, hydrogen and oxygen, which is automatically produced as a by-product during synthetic hydrogen production, mean that the use of carbon-rich coke can be dispensed within iron production in the future. “Our goal is to make thyssenkrupp Steel climate neutral by 2045. As an interim step, we are already aiming to significantly reduce our emissions by 30 % by 2030,” says Marie Jaroni, Head of Decarbonization at thyssenkrupp Steel. STEAG’s planned water electrolysis in Walsum will make an important contribution to achieving these ambitious goals, she adds.

With the agreement that has now been reached, the large-scale project is entering its next phase: “The positive outcome of the feasibility study and the plan for thyssenkrupp Steel to purchase a large proportion of the hydrogen generated in Walsum in the future mean we can start drumming up funding and private investment capital,” says Karl Resch, who negotiated the memorandum of understanding with thyssenkrupp on behalf of STEAG. The signing of the agreement thus marks an important milestone on the road to implementing the project, he remarks.

For STEAG itself, the agreement reached is not merely an important step towards implementing an ambitious energy project. “By guiding the “HydrOxy Walsum” project step by step to success, we are also continuing to drive forward the successful transformation of the STEAG Group as a whole,” Andreas Reichel, Chairman of STEAG’s Board of Management emphasizes. In the course of the coming twelve months, Germany’s formerly biggest producer of power from hard coal will have completed its own coal phase-out to a large extent. At the same time, STEAG is successfully realigning itself to the future growth areas in the energy industry, i. e. with ambitious hydrogen projects in the Ruhr and Saar regions and the almost completed new-build project for a combined cycle gas turbine power plant in Herne.

The investment decision for the water electrolysis project with an installed capacity of up to 520 MW at the Walsum site is expected to be taken by 2023 at the latest, with delivery to thyssenkrupp Steel planned to start in 2025. “We will then put a so-called direct reduction facility into operation on the thyssenkrupp Steel site in Duisburg. This will enable iron to be produced with almost zero emissions using hydrogen rather than by burning coke in a blast furnace,” Jaroni explains.

STEAG guarantees that the hydrogen produced in Walsum will be “green”, or in other words climate neutral. “The water electrolysis will operate entirely with electricity generated from renewable sources. This will enable zero-carbon hydrogen production, which means the steel produced using our hydrogen will also be climate neutral when viewed across the entire value chain,” says Schiele. (STEAG/Si.)

STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, is one of various partners from German energy industry, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has signed agreements with during a delegation trip of Robert Habeck, German Minister for economic affairs and climate actions, to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). ADNOC and STEAG agreed on a sample delivery of carbon-reduced ammonia to be used for separation and capture of nitrogen oxides from the flue gases of STEAG’s German power plants (Figure 1).

“The agreement signed could be the first step to establish a long-term cooperation with a partner who is planning to play a crucial role for the supply of the European Union with hydrogen and its byproducts on a large scale,” says Ralf Schiele, member of STEAG’s management board.

According to the recent memorandum of understanding, ADNOC will supply STEAG with a first amount of “blue” ammonia produced on basis of hydrogen from natural gas. With that ammonia STEAG is running the process of separating nitrogen oxides from flue gases coming out of its German power plants. In mid-term perspective, ADNOC and its partners are planning to set up a “green” ammonia production based on energy from renewable sources.

In December 2021, it was announced that the UAE will create a global clean energy powerhouse intended to spearhead the country‘s drive to net-zero carbon by 2050. Consolidating their combined efforts in renewable energy and green hydrogen, ADNOC, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (TAQA), and Mubadala Investment Company (Mubadala) will partner under the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) brand. The partnership between three Abu Dhabi champions will have a combined current, committed, and exclusive capacity of over 23 GW of renewable energy, with the expectation of reaching well over 50 GW total capacity by 2030 and aspirations to grow this figure further.

Topics to be discussed in future between the partners reach from forthcoming hydrogen delivery to cooperation on the field of solar energy where STEAG’s subsidiary STEAG Solar Energy Solution (SENS) has proven to be very experienced.

“We are willing to deepen talks on these aspects in the near future since we see great opportunities for both partners to gain profit from each other’s specific competences,” Andreas Reichel, chairman of STEAG’s management board, is giving an outlook.

Finally, Reichel on behalf of STEAG, expresses his thanks to Minister Habeck for organizing the delegation trip which STEAG could participate in. “The trip and the opportunity to get in close and personal contact with our partners in the UAE was extremely helpful and speeded up talks. The Minister deserves great thanks for having made this happen,” is Reichel really satisfied with the trip’s outcomes. (STEAG/Si.)