From euobserver
Anti-coal protest in Germany in June 2018, days ahead of the coal commission’s first meeting. The commission published its report over the weekend (Photo: mw238)
By Peter Teffer
Brussels, 28. Jan, 09:24
Germany should gradually close down its coal-fired power plants by 2038, an advisory commission has said in its final report, published at the weekend.
“We made it. … This is a historic effort,” said the commission’s chairman Ronald Pofalla on Saturday (26 January).
While the 336-page coal phase-out plan still needs approval from the German government, it would be a surprise if it were rejected.
The commission was appointed by chancellor Angela Merkel last year and consisted of various interest groups: the 28 members came from industry, environmentalist groups, government, and civil society.
In 2018, 22.5 percent of Germany’s electricity was produced by lignite, and 12.8 percent by hard coal – in total, a full third of power coming from coal, the most CO2-intensive fossil fuel.
The plan to phase out coal would be a big step for Germany to reduce its CO2 emissions, which have stagnated in recent years.
(Photo: Clean Energy Wire)
A challenge is that Germany has already embarked on a mission to phase out nuclear power, which despite its other environmental concerns is relatively clean when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.
A large share of Germany’s electricity comes from wind and solar power, but technology has not yet advanced far enough for renewable energy to be stored for periods when there is no sun and wind.
Countries therefore need some kind of back-up power, which in Germany has been coal.
It looks likely that partially that will be replaced by natural gas from Russia.
“We have a very difficult problem, namely that almost the only sources of energy that will be able to provide baseload power are coal and lignite,” said Merkel in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
Nord Stream 2
That speech gave a hint of how Merkel would combine two policy challenges: the coal phase-out and the controversial Nord Stream 2 project.
Nord Stream 2 is a planned pipeline, through which state-owned Russian gas company Gazprom would provide Germany with natural gas.
Several of Germany’s EU allies and the US are strongly against the gas pipeline, because they fear it will both undercut Ukraine and make Europe too dependent on Russian gas.
Germany however is in favour of the project, for which construction began in Germany last year.
Read the rest of the article here.
You are conveniently forgetting that Russia is hobbling on a depopulation precipice.
Sometimes you can win by refraining from the stupid actions of your competitors. This will be like that. Aka. What China’s leadership is thinking.
Has anyone in Germany asked about the vast amount of CO2 coming from both India and China, plus S/E Asia.
Or is Mercal simply into Virtue signalling.
Of course Germany can use Gas as a means of smoothing out the ups and downs of the Green electricity, Norway with its Hydro is v” also very useful, but it must add to the cost of electricity, so what are Germanys manufactories doing about this price increase ?
MJE
Michael “so what are Germany’s manufacturers doing about this price increase ?”
…packing up their bats and balls and relocating abroad.
It’s not just the car makers (reference a comment above about BMW in Carolina), but the steel makers in Germany and Austria were warning several years ago about the influence inflated EU energy costs were having on their decision to invest in upgrading domestic steel mills in Europe versus spending the money building new facilities abroad. At the time the preferred option was investing in the USA, even with Obummer doing his best to scuttle his own country’s competitive advantage.
The ramifications of this go well beyond Russia having Germany’s knackers in a vice any time they want to. There’s a major economic hit also.
Coal generates jobs, and other economic activity in Germany. Read that as “major tax revenue”. Germany’s tax base will shrink. Worse, what used to be in country economic activity will turn into mass export of German currency to Russia. Big tilt in balance of trade.
Other economic effects. With Germany as a customer, Russia doesn’t have to play nice anymore with the rest of its customers. Get prepared Ukraine and others. Prices for them will rise. Although that will attract other suppliers into the market, like the undersea pipeline from Israel for example.
Germany is self inflicting a major economic wound and the secondary effects will be felt across the continent. As for Russia, the giant influx of new money will do nothing to constrain their meddling in world affairs.
This is actually a grand dry run for the efficacy of solar and wind. No more excuses no more fancy theories. When Deutschland rips coal out of the equation and substitutes natural gas as
the Atlas holding the Globe of renewables in orbit three startling realities will be unmasked. For all to see. First, base load power from another reliable source is a fundamental requirement that will never change. Secondly, gas is cheap, clean and abundant and is not radioactive or snuffed out by droughts as hydro would be so is the natural choice for producing this baseload power for the Vaterland. Thirdly, wind and solar hardware wears out quickly and performance drops each year engendering high predictable maintenance costs. Gas turbines are well understood highly efficient mechanical devices especially coupled with steam cogen technologies. Simple to build, cheap to maintain, last longer and highly reliable if the source gas is highly reliable. That last bit is the bugaboo for the jolly green giant Germans and will ultimately be their undoing.
On a more immediate level, increased fuel and electricity prices in Germany have led to my German friends cutting down trees and burning them at a vastly increased rate. My buddy with a small farm has purchased a PTO wood chipper which can handle 40cm diameter logs. He has a massive wood chip pile which he feeds to his auger driven wood furnace. All the farmland around him is growing maize. Not for cattle or human feed, but to be burned in a bio-fed electrical power plant. It used to burn coal.
I’m not a fan of the US corn to ethanol mandate, but at least it produces a significant foodstuff byproduct, 40% by weight of distillers grains, used as animal feed. The German maize to energy plants destroy all food value of the maize.
It is perverse.
The maize is not burned… it is added to anaerobic digesters. Yes, this is an undesirable part of anaerobic digestion… but on the other hand it reduces farm waste and produces fertilizer.
But no food for people, the ultimate polluters, eh?
John Doran.
Well, the global warmers in Germany and elsewhere are always keen to ratchet up the price of energy if the customer is bent over a barrel. So I guess it makes sense that they are OK if Russia offers to lend them a helping hand at some point in the future. Why put up the price of energy yourself if you can get somebody else to do it for you.
Tbh, I’m sure that the Russians will be equally keen to ensure that the money keeps flowing in the opposite direction to the gas. It seems more interesting that this is essentially a commitment to continue using fossil fuels as the most important energy source. As in the US and UK, gas can achieve some reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of energy, but the amount is limited and it cannot achieve the ultimate green dream of phasing out fossil fuels entirely.
It strikes me as a case of today’s politicians just making some token short- and medium-term gestures to mollify those asking for extreme de-carbonization measures but who also apparently don’t realize yet that they can never reach their promised land on this route. They took the wrong turning at the fork in the road when the road-sign said “Nuclear this way”.
Well we’ll see…
I note that Germany no longer mines hard coal and that all that fuel has to be imported. I am unsure whether like the UK it gets coal from Russia (50% of UK supply) or Columbia, with its mining human rights issues, like Eire.
As we ready our yellow jackets in the face of this political idiocy, might I suggest they are printed with one word – “PROSPERITY”
From the article: ““We have a very difficult problem, namely that almost the only sources of energy that will be able to provide baseload power are coal and lignite,” said Merkel in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.”
The real problem Germany has is its leaders are delusional.
Nuclear power would allow Germany to reach all their power and CO2 goals. So what do German leaders do? They close their existing nuclear powerplants for no good reason, and then pretend that nuclear power is not a viable option for the future.
Some people can see the trainwreck coming and some people can’t. Germany has leaders who can’t see the trainwreck coming.
We live in a world where large portions of the population live in completely different realities. One group or the other is delusional. It looks to me like the group Angela Merkel belongs to is the one that is delusional.
Germany has leaders who are pedal-to-the-metal to get the biggest train wreck.
“Venezuela here we come” they sing as they march off into a dark future.
James Bull
France has a large potential for fracked gas but they have had a moratorium on fracking since 2011. The Ukraine has large potential but the upheaval there has put exploration on hold. You would think nations that suffered through two world wars would welcome energy independence instead they seem to want to leave themselves vulnerable to a hostile potential enemy in order to stay loyal the Church of Global Warming.