Evonik’s new combined gas and steam turbine power plant in Marl gets financial backing from KfW IPEX-Bank and Siemens Financial Services

Evonik’s new combined gas and steam turbine power plant in Marl gets financial backing from KfW IPEX-Bank and Siemens Financial Services

• Replacement for existing reserve gas power plant
• Built by Siemens Energy as the general contractor

(PRESS RELEASE) FRANKFURT, 18-Jun-2020 — /EuropaWire/ — German state-owned development bank KfW has announced that its subsidiary KfW IPEX-Bank GmbH together with Siemens Financial Services will jointly provide funding for Evonik’s new combined gas and steam turbine power plant, its largest production site. The two financial firms will provide the overall financing for the new plant with a project volume in the lower three-digit million euro range during both the construction and operation phases. Evonik (Evonik Industries AG) is the second largest chemicals company in Germany, and one of the largest speciality chemicals producers in the world.

The new power plant will replace one of the company’s existing reserve gas power plants. Along with another combined gas and steam turbine power plant on which construction already began in March of this year and for which the financing was completed in August 2019 – also provided by KfW IPEX-Bank and Siemens Financial Services – the two plants will together ensure a climate-friendly and sustainable energy supply for the Marl Chemical Park in the long term. Construction on the new power plant is scheduled to begin this year, so that both can go into operation at the same time in 2022. All power plants in the park will be operated from a central control station in the future.

With a total efficiency of over 90 per cent, the two new plants will generate up to 270 megawatts of electricity, corresponding to the needs of around 750,000 households. They will also be able to generate up to 660 tonnes of steam per hour. Additionally, some 2,000 households in Marl will be supplied with district heating from the site’s steam network in the future.

The new power plant structure will make it possible for the Marl Chemical Park to operate as a stand-alone facility in the event of failures in the public power grid – the power plants can thus continue to independently deliver electricity or steam to plants that are particularly dependent on an uninterrupted supply. The power plants’ highly flexible load control principle can also help to compensate for fluctuating feed-ins of renewable energy sources – an indispensable prerequisite for the energy transition.

Markus Scheer, member of the Management Board of KfW IPEX-Bank, said: “With Evonik and Siemens, we are pleased to support two of our key clients – both important and traditional large-scale industrial companies – in financing ultramodern and efficient power plants to ensure a stable and reliable, cost-effective and sustainable supply of electricity, thus contributing to a successful energy transition.”

“Our many years of financial and industrial expertise in the energy sector played a decisive role in helping Siemens Energy and KfW IPEX-Bank to develop a tailored financing solution for the second power plant project in a row,” commented Veronika Bienert, CFO of Siemens Financial Services. “With the successful continuation of this close and innovative cooperation, we were able to provide our customer Evonik with the best possible support in implementing another groundbreaking energy transition project.”

For Evonik, the modernisation of the power plant park marks another step towards achieving the group’s sustainability goals. Evonik’s main climate target is to cut its absolute greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2025 compared with the baseline year 2008. With the construction of the two new power plants, the specialty chemicals company is heralding the end of electricity and steam generation based on hard coal throughout the group.

Media contact:

Ms Dela Strumpf
Phone +49 (0) 69 7431 2984
Fax +49 (0) 69 7431 8536
Dela.Strumpf@kfw.de

SOURCE: KfW IPEX-Bank