Veolia’s energy management portfolio will now grow to 2.4GW.
Veolia, a French utility, has reached an agreement with Uniper to acquire a 430MW gas-fired combined-cycle power plant in Hungary.
The facility, owned by Uniper through its local entity, Uniper Hungary Energetikai, will be transferred to Veolia Invest Hungary, a subsidiary of Veolia.
The companies did not disclose the transaction’s financial details. The power plant in Gönyű, located in the country’s north-west, has been operational since 2011. Following the acquisition, Veolia’s portfolio will include 2.4GW of capacity, enough to meet the energy needs of 2.6 million people.
Vitol Group looks to enter the Japanese power market.
Veolia CEO Estelle Brachlianoff stated, “This agreement is perfectly aligned with our ambitions to develop flexibility capacities, which are an essential complement to the stability of the European power grid.”
“As a long-standing player in the Hungarian energy market, we are delighted to be able to widen our footprint in order to further contribute to reinforcing the resilience of the local power system.”
The EU Commission approved a stabilisation plan for Uniper in December 2022, and the company was required to comply with several rulings. One of these was selling the Hungarian asset to meet EU state assistance requirements.
Regulatory approval for the sale will be obtained in the second half of 2024.
Uniper had announced the permanent shutdown of its 875MW Heyden 4 hard coal-fired power plant in Petershagen, Minden, Germany, by the end of September 2024, as part of Germany’s emissions-reduction plan.
However, the plant reopened in August 2022 to address the energy crisis, after an ordinance allowed it to generate electricity.
Source Veolia
