German economy minister questions feasibility of earlier coal exit by 2030

An earlier phase-out of coal-fired power production in Germany by 2030 is unlikely if the country does not manage to install sufficient alternative backup capacity to support the electricity system during times of low renewable power output, economy minister Robert Habeck has said. “For me, energy supply security will always be the absolute priority,” Habeck said at a conference, newspaper Tagesspiegel reported. He argued that Germany “cannot risk creating a situation by our own political decision that is similar to the one we had after the loss of Russian gas,” in which Germany re-fired already decommissioned coal plants to maintain a secure power supply.

Germany has an official legal deadline to end coal by 2038, but the outgoing government of chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) in its coalition programme agreed in 2021 that they would seek to “ideally” pull the exit forward by eight years. The Green Party (of which Habeck is a member of) had insisted on including the ambition, which had also been part of its election programme in the vote that took place a few months before the height of the energy crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Leaders from Germany’s eastern coal mining states have so far not signalled any ambition to achieve an earlier phase-out. The economy ministry had said it expected carbon prices in the European trading system ETS to rise and make coal-fired power production economically unviable well before 2038 across Germany. In western coal mining state North Rhine-Westphalia, however, Habeck’s economy ministry did broker a deal with the state’s coalition government formed by the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Green Party to pull the exit forward to 2030 - provided that sufficient backup capacity is put into place.

These plans suffered a severe setback last week, when the economy ministry said a planned law to start auctions for hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants in 2025 and thus ensure the construction of backup capacity, the Power Plant Security Act, would not be adopted before the election as planned. The ministry said this was due to a lack of support by the federal CDU for the law in its current form, as Scholz’s minority government depends on votes by other parties in parliament to get its last projects across the line.  

Kathrin Henneberger, a member of parliament for the Green Party, said that questioning the 2030 phase-out in North Rhine-Westphalia should not be an option regardless of the failed Power Plant Security Act. “The climate crisis is too pressing to allow ourselves to keep burning coal,” Henneberger said according to Tagesspiegel. All parties in parliament had to support “important transformative processes,” such as grid expansion, increased efficiency and the buildout of storage capacity, she argued.