The colorful boxes on the foils from Uniper Kraftwerke are reminiscent of a wooden construction kit with colored bricks for children.

The round or square blocks in different sizes look pretty, but they are not toys.

Rather, they symbolize important future visions for the community of Großkrotzenburg, the city of Hanau, the region and, above all, for the Staudinger power plant on the banks of the Main.

In four simulation games for the years 2025, 2030, 2035 and 2040, the blocks demonstrate the development steps that Uniper considers possible or likely to be possible or probable for Hesse's largest coal-fired power plant over the next almost two decades.

The path shown describes what the almost complete transformation of the power plant could look like.

Luise Glaser-Lotz

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Main-Kinzig district.

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On the first slide for 2025, the year in which the generation of electricity by coal at Staudinger is to end, the part of the gray-colored existing systems clearly predominates. The two cooling towers, which can be seen from afar, can be clearly recognized. Four chimneys protrude into the sky, and the large circular coal store on the edge of the site is still there.

Right next to it is a small brown box.

It stands for a data center, a light blue rectangle denotes a cooling supply system for the data center.

A red rectangle is described as district heating / energy supply, and a purple circle means district heating produced by the Großkrotzenburg municipal utility.

The cooling towers will still be in place in 2030, but a large square area on which the existing buildings stood is empty.

The coal bunker is no longer there either.

For this purpose, two boxes have been added for data centers, and the district heating generation of the municipal utilities now has a light green energy store as a neighbor.

Dismantling is not that easy

Five years later, there is only one cooling tower on the film, but the number of brown boxes for data centers has grown to seven. A new addition is a dark blue rectangle, which is intended to mark the entry into hydrogen technology. The last slide shows three large complexes for hydrogen production. There should be nothing left of today's existing buildings by 2040.

The further development of the power plant site is just as important to the community as the rapid dismantling of the superfluous facilities. In its most recent meeting, the municipal council passed a resolution with a corresponding request to the operating company. Of course, Uniper Kraftwerke GmbH is planning “unbundling and dismantling activities” as part of the development of the areas, reacts power plant manager Matthias Hube to the resolution.

The company's plans were presented to the community board in personal discussions in June and October.

“The complexity of the unbundling measures” and the degree of maturity of the planned future uses would be decisive for the sequence.

With this, the plant manager signals to the municipal council that the dismantling depends on many factors and is not as easy to accomplish as some might think.

How the projects could work was tried out on the Staudinger site in the summer of 2020 when the cooling tower of the unused power plant block 3 was knocked down with a wrecking ball.

"A major step forward"

By degree of maturity, Hube also means the progress of the planning rights for the area. The realization of projects such as the establishment of data centers or cooperation projects with the Hanau municipal utilities and the Großkrotzenburg municipal utilities to supply the municipalities with district heating even after 2025 largely depends on this. Hube describes the resolution of the articles of association for the development plan "industrial area on the Limes Bridge", which was made by the municipal council in October, and which relates to the Staudinger site as a major step forward. But planning rights only existed for the parts intended as supply areas.

For the designation of the commercial areas decided by the municipality, this only applies after the official announcement and inclusion in the zoning plan.

Only when there is legal force, deals could be made with potential partners.

For this, the ball lies with the municipality, which should ensure that legal force is entered soon.

Hube hopes this will be the case by the second quarter of 2022.

Hube does not see the city of Hanau's plans to establish a large-scale data center in the nearby Großauheim barracks as competition.

The need is great and synergy effects rather than disadvantages are to be expected.

As things stand at present, Uniper wants to remain the owner of the space and secure it for future partners with long-term contracts.

In the planning, however, it should be taken into account that the site will continue to be dedicated to power generation in the next few years.

The Federal Network Agency had classified Unit 4, which runs on natural gas, as systemically relevant by the end of March 2023.

Unit 5, which is fired with hard coal, will continue to run until the end of 2025.

However, it cannot be ruled out that both blocks will have to be maintained beyond 2025.

That lies solely in the decision-making power of the Federal Network Agency.