German coal mining could end by 2030s - CDU chief energy policy negotiator

The chief energy policy negotiator of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU in the ongoing ‘Jamaica coalition’ talks, North Rhine-Westphalia’s (NRW) State Premier Armin Laschet, said that Germany could give up coal-fired power production by the 2030s, Karl Matthiesen writes on Climate Home News. “We don’t have an end date”, Laschet said. “The expectation is it could be the thirties.” Laschet added that the Green Party’s demand to rapidly take 8-10 gigawatt (GW) of coal power off the grid might threaten its stability, arguing that as much as 5GW could be safely removed.

Read the article in English here.

See CLEW’s Coalition Watch for latest developments in the ongoing talks over a new German government, and find a Twitter message by Felix Matthes of the Institute for Applied Ecology on the amount of coal power that can be taken off line in the short term here.