The plant could have been abandoned. It may still be. But Uniper, formerly Eon, now says it will put the nearly completed Datteln 4 into operation after getting a final permit. The market for its electricity doesn’t look good, Craig Morris says. Last October, I wrote about the saga at Datteln 4, the 80% finished one-gigawatt hard coal plant that should have gone into operation in 2011 but was built five kilometers from the site for which a permit had been granted. Climate activists exploited that violation in court, but the company, Uniper, managed to finally get a permit for the actual site on January 19. Now, Uniper says it will complete the plant and put it into operation. The project has basically been on ice since mid-2009. With a billion euros already sunk in the plant, Uniper’s decision to proceed is understandable. On the other hand, the outlook for coal power is bleak in Germany. If Datteln 4 goes into operation in, say, 2018, it may only have 20 years to stay in operation. That’s … Continue reading Germany to complete yet another coal plant