Energy-intensive firms fear higher power costs from coal exit

A report commissioned by RWE, one of Germany's largest owners of lignite mines and coal-fired power generation, says that a mandated German coal exit by 2040 would shift power generation and related CO₂ emissions to neighbouring countries and lead to higher costs for electricity consumers. Such a phase-out path would increase power prices by nine euros more per megawatt hour than in a scenario without such a coal phase-out, says the report produced by Frontier Economics, seen by the Clean Energy Wire. In total, a coal exit conducted this way would cost electricity consumers up to four billion euros per year more than in the reference scenario, the report says. Many energy-intensive companies have expressed concern that the recently formed coal exit commission will put further strain on them, Klaus Stratmann writes in a front page article on the report in Handelsblatt, a major German business daily. “Energy-intensive companies that compete internationally cannot pass on the additional costs that arise from special national rules,” Utz Tillmann, chief executive of the German Chemicals Industry Association (VCI), commented.

Read the Handelsblatt article in German here.

For background, read the dossier Energiewende effects on power prices, costs and industry and the factsheet Industrial power prices and the Energiewende.