City of Hanover pulls forward own coal exit to 2026
Clean Energy Wire
The City of Hanover has finalised plans to shut down the combined heat-and-power hard coal station in Stöcken by 2026, operator enercity said in a press release.The agreement between the town government and the energy company makes enercity building replacement plants a prerequisite of the shutdown. As part of the deal, the city of Hanover and enercity will make a total of 35 million euros available to the people of Hanover for the years 2021 to 2023 to finance CO2-reducing measures, such as replacing oil heating systems and the obligation to connect previously fossil-fuel heating systems to the district heating network. With these and other measures, Hanover with its 500,000 inhabitants wants to save around 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide to become climate neutral by 2035. This corresponds to more than half of the CO2 emissions for the coal-fired power plant in its previously planned lifetime until 2030, the press release says.
Germany has a federal coal exit law in place that requires the last coal-fired power station to be shut down by 2038. While there is a set phase-out schedule for lignite plants, hard coal stations can participate in shutdown tenders to receive a payment for closing operations. In other cases, such as in Hanover, local energy companies and municipalities pursue an earlier switch to less greenhouse gas intensive power sources, for example natural gas or biomass.
