The Neurath coal-fired power station in Germany / Image: Getty.
Germany celebrated Easter in its own way by shutting down nearly 15 coal-fired power plants in the Rhineland and Brandenburg. With this operation, the country confirms its desire to do without this resource, which emits the most greenhouse gases.
If for many, this long Easter weekend rhymed with egg hunts and family meals, German electricians had their work cut out for them. On Sunday, they in fact disconnected 7 coal-fired power plants for a total power of 3.1 GW. Then, they did it again on Monday with 8 additional small and medium capacity power plants totaling a power of 1.3 GW.
The disconnection of these 15 power plants had been planned for a long time, but the war in Ukraine and the surge in electricity prices had pushed the German authorities to postpone this operation to secure its electricity production. From now on, in particular thanks to the increase in renewable energy production capacities, they no longer have any use for the German electricity network. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck declared that they were not “neither necessary nor profitable”. Preserving the environment and the climate therefore does not seem to have been the primary motivation for these closures.
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Will Germany really be able to phase out coal in 2030?
If, at the end of 2022, RWE had confirmed the objective of phasing out coal by 2030, the Federal Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, has since given a much less categorical speech. However, with the disconnection of these 4.4 GW of coal-fired power plants, Germany is sending a new strong signal concerning its desire to decarbonize its electricity mix as quickly as possible. It is difficult to know if this will be enough to completely move away from coal by 2030, but the figures remain impressive: in 2023, electricity production from coal (and lignite) fell to 131.6 TWh, after having was 179.9 TWh in 2022. If coal remains the second Source of electricity production in the country with 26.1% of the mix in 2023, it represented a third in 2022.
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