Germany briefly becomes power importer as CO2 price rises

A rising CO₂ price and low market prices for electricity have led coal plant operators in Germany to throttle down their power production during the Pentecost public holiday, causing a short period of net power imports in the country that usually produces much more power than it consumes, Frank-Thomas Wenzel writes in the Frankfurter Rundschau. Very sunny and windy weather caused Germany’s renewable power plants to produce a lot of electricity, while at the same time consumption was low due to most businesses being closed, Wenzel writes. In addition, melting snow in the Alps filled many hydropower plants in Germany’s southern neighbour countries, making power even cheaper. But the jump in CO₂ prices, which briefly reached 15.9 euros per tonne, made operating coal plants so expensive that the owners decided to lower the total capacity from about 16 gigawatts (GW) to 3 GW over the bank holidays, he says.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet on The causes and effects of negative power prices and on Europe’s emissions trading system for background.