Munich votes for coal exit

Citizens of Munich have voted to shut down the city’s single largest source of CO₂ emissions ahead of schedule, klimaretter.info reports. Around 60 percent voted in favour of close the Munich Nord heating plant by 2022, instead of 2035 as planned by the municipal utility SWM. The plant accounts for around 17 percent of Munich’s total carbon emissions, klimaretter.info reports.
Stefanie Langkamp of Climate-Alliance Germany said the rest of Germany needed to follow the Munich voters’ lead. “The parties discussing a coalition government in Berlin must set an end date for coal-fired power production,” Langkamp said. A coalition agreement that failed to specify a coal exit would “dodge responsibility and interests of a large part of our citizenship,” she added.
In a separate article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Heiner Effern writes that Munich’s mayor says he was going to ask Germany’s Federal Grid Agency (BNetzA) to evaluate an early shutdown of the plant. The BNetzA ultimately decides which plants can be taken off the grid without threatening the system’s stability.

Find the article in German here.

See the CLEW interview “Our guests will be surprised how much Germany relies on coal” for background.