FRANKFURT (Reuters) -RWE on Thursday said it had agreed to buy a 1.4 gigawatt (GW) gas-fired power plant from Sweden’s Vattenfall in a deal valuing the asset at 500 million euros ($534 million).
The planned acquisition of Vattenfall’s Magnum plant, located in the Netherlands, is expected to close by the end of the third quarter, RWE said in a statement, adding that the deal also covered a 5.6 megawatt solar park.
Magnum “can be made technically suitable to co-fire hydrogen by up to 30%”, RWE said in a statement, adding that the plant’s Eemshaven location puts it in close vicinity to RWE’s local 1.56 GW coal-and biomass-fired power plant.
This, RWE said, would result in “comprehensive benefits” due to the sharing of local infrastructure.
Adding gas-fired power plant capacity has been part of the growth strategy of RWE, which now ranks among Europe’s largest renewables players and which has said more capacity would be needed to bridge a transition towards solar and wind.
($1 = 0.9369 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz, editing by Rachel More)
