• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BREAKING: Federal Budget Pours Tens of Billions Into Clean Economy March 28, 2023
Somali Canadians Aid Drought-Stricken Homeland as 43,000 Reported Dead March 26, 2023
B.C.’s New Energy Framework a ‘Smokescreen,’ Critic Warns March 26, 2023
SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20 March 20, 2023
Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action March 20, 2023
Next
Prev

Former Coal Commissioners Slam Germany’s Phaseout Plan

January 22, 2020
Reading time: 3 minutes

Carbon emissions from a coal plant in Germany

Arnold Paul/Flickr

 

Former members of Germany’s coal commission are accusing the national government of breaking the compromise behind its much-acclaimed agreement to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2038, producing a final plan that must now be updated to achieve quicker emissions reductions in line with the country’s climate targets.

Former commission co-leader Barbara Praetorius, Potsdam Institute founding director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, and all the environmental NGO representatives on the panel made their objections known in a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel, “saying the compromise that had so far enjoyed their backing would be void if no changes are made to the agreed roadmap,” Clean Energy Wire reports. Praetorius told media the final roadmap deviates “considerably” from the original plan, with “no continuous and linear shutdown of lignite plants” and most of the capacity coming off the grid in the 2020s remaining online until the last two years of the decade, the Berlin-based newsletter adds.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe

That was after the commission members negotiated a fast start and smooth pace for coal plant shutdowns over the next few years, said Kai Niebert, president of the Deutscher Naturschutzring environmental network. “Now everything will be postponed,” he said, adding that he felt “clearly betrayed” by Merkel and the premiers of Germany’s coal mining states.

Despite the equivocal reaction from RWE, the giant utility at the centre of the phaseout announcement and its €40-billion compensation plan, Niebert “argued that other members of the commission consisting of industry representatives, policy-makers, and environmental and civil society organizations had no reason to complain about the roadmap, as most interests that were negotiated during the group’s talks had been satisfied ‘except climate action’,” Clean Energy Wire adds.

“In a sometimes hot-tempered panel debate at the same event between Praetorius and RWE head Rolf Martin Schmitz, the former coal commission co-leader insisted the agreement needs to be adjusted for the sake of climate action,” writes reporter Benjamin Wehrmann. “Schmitz countered that the coal compromise stipulated a gradual emissions reduction but no continuous decommissioning of lignite plants.”

Wehrmann says the original coal commission compromise called for both a “steady [stetig] reduction of lignite capacity in the market” and a “steady” reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from coal between 2023 and 2030.

“There will be continuous CO2 reduction because we’ll also close hard coal plants in the years when no lignite plants are taken off the grid,” Schmitz said, cautioning that quicker phaseouts would mean greater hardship for coal workers. Praetorius countered that the country’s hard coal plants have far less impact than its more emissions-intensive lignite operations.

“That’s why lignite is at the heart of the entire coal compromise,” she said.

The former commissioners also noted “that although the symbolic climate activist battleground Hambach Forest is going to be saved, it would be ‘outrageous’ for several villages near existing coal mines to still be torn down,” Clean Energy Wire adds. Antje Grothus of Buirer für Buir, which represents the interests of people living near the surface mines, said her group was being “used as a tool” to justify the government’s plan, vowing that protests at coal mines and plants would continue.

The group also said the compensation plan announced last week, with RWE alone receiving €2.6 billion, would undercut the effectiveness of the European Emission Trading System (ETS), while the country’s “current expansion blockade” on onshore wind and its looming cap on new solar would make it difficult to replace the shuttered coal capacity and hit Germany’s 2030 target for bringing renewables to 65% of total electricity use.

Felix Matthes, energy and climate research coordinator at Germany’s Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut), said Germany’s willingness to open a new coal plant, Datteln 4, in the midst of the phaseout “would now send a disastrous signal to all countries which considered emulating parts of Germany’s coal exit,” Clean Energy Wire says. The facility could emit up to 14 megatonnes of carbon dioxide more than the plants scheduled for closure, and Öko-Institut said the overall deal would produce 40 megatonnes more than the coal commission’s original negotiated compromise by 2030.



in Biodiversity & Habitat, Clean Electricity Grid, Climate Action / "Blockadia", Coal, Ending Emissions, Energy Politics, Forests & Deforestation, UK & Europe

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

kelly8843496 / Pixabay
Finance & Investment

BREAKING: Federal Budget Pours Tens of Billions Into Clean Economy

March 29, 2023
744
TruckPR/flickr
Hydrogen

Opinion: Hydrogen Hype Sabotages Potential to Decarbonize

March 28, 2023
394
icondigital/pixabay
Supply Chains & Consumption

New Federal Procurement Rule Requires Biggest Bidders to Report Net-Zero Plans

March 28, 2023
200

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

kelly8843496 / Pixabay

BREAKING: Federal Budget Pours Tens of Billions Into Clean Economy

March 29, 2023
744
Bruce Reeve/Flickr

Opinion: Ontario’s New ‘Carbon Tax’ Looks Like the One Doug Ford Fought

June 7, 2022
1.8k
Faye Cornish/Unsplash

Abundance, Not Austerity: Reframe the Climate Narrative, Solnit Urges

March 26, 2023
179
icondigital/pixabay

New Federal Procurement Rule Requires Biggest Bidders to Report Net-Zero Plans

March 28, 2023
200
U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement/flickr

Willow Oil Project in Alaska Faces Legal Challenges, Economic Doubts

March 19, 2023
780
TruckPR/flickr

Opinion: Hydrogen Hype Sabotages Potential to Decarbonize

March 28, 2023
394

Recent Posts

UNICEF Ethiopia/flickr

Somali Canadians Aid Drought-Stricken Homeland as 43,000 Reported Dead

March 29, 2023
45
Σ64/Wikimedia Commons

B.C.’s New Energy Framework a ‘Smokescreen,’ Critic Warns

March 28, 2023
69
Prime Minister's Office/flickr

Biden’s Ottawa Visit Highlights EVs, Clean Grid, Critical Minerals

March 28, 2023
92
EUMETSAT/wikimedia commons

Cyclone Freddy Leaves Over 500 Dead on Africa’s Southeast Coast

March 23, 2023
65
Kern River Valley Fire Info/Facebook

SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20

March 20, 2023
345
IFRC Intl. Federation:Twitter

Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action

March 21, 2023
1k
Next Post
Richard Howe/Flickr

Harvard Students Protest After Exxon’s Law Firm Tries to Recruit Them

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}