Factbox: German coal-fired power capacity under review

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A government-appointed commission recommended on Saturday that Germany shut its coal-fired power plants by 2038 at the latest and proposed at least 40 billion euros ($45.7 billion) in aid for the affected regions.

Germany depends on coal, which produces high levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, for 38 percent of its power needs.

Below are details of utilities and their coal plants:

RWE

RWE produces most of its electricity from brown coal, also called lignite. In Germany, it has lignite-powered plants with 10.3 gigawatts (GW) capacity and 3 GW of hard coal plants.

Lignite is mined and burned for power at locations such as Hambach, Garzweiler and Inden.

UNIPER

Uniper operates 3.8 GW of coal-fired capacity out of a total 10.6 GW of its capacity in Germany. Its 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) Datteln 4 coal power plant has yet to start up 10 years after construction began due to protests from environmentalists.

STEAG

Essen-based Steag has seven coal-fired power plants with 5 GW capacity in western Germany. It retired 2.5 GW in 2017.

EnBW

After an early focus on moving to renewable energy, southwestern utility EnBW has 4.2 GW of coal generation capacity left, out of a total portfolio of 13 GW.

VATTENFALL

The German arm of Sweden's Vattenfall sold its eastern German mining and power station operations to a Czech consortium led by EPH and finance investor PPF. It still runs a 3 billion euro coal power station in Hamburg Moorburg that started up in 2015 after years of delay.

LAUSITZ ENERGIE (LEAG)

LEAG operates the former Vattenfall brown coal-fired plants with 8 GW of capacity in the Lusatia region, employing 8,000 people in mining and power plants.

E.ON

E.ON has almost no coal-burning capacity, having turned its focus to customer services and renewable energy.

($1 = 0.8763 euros)

(Reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff, Christoph Steitz and Vera Eckert; Editing by Edmund Blair)