Bavaria will force Uniper to sell its local hydropower plants if necessary – state premier

Bavaria wants to take over numerous hydropower plants in the southern German state, if necessary by forcing a sale from operator Uniper, state premier Markus Söder has said. He added the state would exercise its right to take over more than 85 power plants on Bavarian rivers from 2030, news website n-tv reported. The leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Democrats (CSU), a sister party of the conservative CDU, said the takeover could also happen against the federal government, which took over the group at the height of the gas crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine to avoid a bankruptcy of the country's largest gas provider. Söder said he increasingly wanted to apply the principle that "local energy should be in local hands."

Uniper is a major German energy supplier, and was Europe’s largest buyer of Russian gas before the invasion of Ukraine. Uniper was nationalised after the company lost billions of euros due to the collapse of gas trading between Germany and Russia. Bavaria’s government announced the takeover plans last summer, at the time saying that they involved 97 hydropower plants in Bavaria with a combined capacity of around 970 megawatts (MW), around one third of Bavaria's total hydropower capacity.