After late-night talks, a dedicated commission has agreed a timetable to phase out coal burning in Europe’s largest economy

By Sven Egenter and Benjamin Wehrmann for Clean Energy Wire

Germany will stop burning coal for electricity by 2038, under plans finalised by a commission in the small hours of Saturday.

It is the first time Europe’s biggest economy, which gets 35% of its power from coal, has outlined a timeline to phase out the polluting fuel.

A commission drawn from industry, civil society, green groups and government published its final report after more than six months of deliberations and a last 21-hour marathon negotiating session.

In the resulting compromise, 12.5GW of coal power capacity will close by 2022 and another 25.6GW by 2030. This will be coupled with a support package to affected regions that media estimated was worth €40 billion over 20 years. Out of 28 committee members, 27 endorsed the deal.

Since the talks’ launch under the official title “Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment” in June 2018, the delegations have been assessing the coal exit’s impact on Germany’s emissions reduction, power prices and supply security, economic development in coal regions and the future course of Germany’s energy transition, the Energiewende. The report provides a comprehensive overview of all these aspects and also discusses the impact of a German coal exit on power and emissions trading across Europe.

The conclusions are only advisory for Germany’s government and the actual implementation of measures may ultimately deviate from what the commission recommends. However, the government is widely expected to follow the proposals. The report says that “the commission’s members represent a broad sample of the relevant societal, political and economic actors. This provides a basis for a robust societal consensus that everyone involved can rely upon over the coming years.”

Emissions reduction/coal plant decommissioning

In its opening remarks, the report acknowledges that ending coal-fired power production around the globe is indispensable for effective climate action. It adds that for Germany “as a highly industrialised and export-oriented nation with a relatively large share of coal in power generation, ending coal-fired power production is particularly challenging.”

In order to decide on a phase-out plan, the commission first assumed that Germany’s energy sector carbon emissions will sink from about 313 million tonnes in 2017 to roughly 280 million tonnes annually by 2020 thanks to measures already agreed on, such as the European Emissions Trading System (ETS), continued renewables expansion, efficiency measures, and so on.

However, it states that this is not likely to be enough for achieving the country’s 2030 target of reducing emissions in the sector to 175 to 183 million tonnes. Germany’s total emissions in 2017 stood at 907 tonnes.

2018-2022

The decommissioning roadmap is derived from these assumptions. For the period until 2022, the commission says that by 2022 both lignite and hard coal capacity should fall to 15 GW respectively. This would amount to a reduction by nearly 5 GW in lignite and 7.7 GW in hard coal capacity compared to 2017.

Overall, this would mean a reduction of coal capacity by 2022 of at least 12.5 GW, including plants that would go into reserve capacity anyway. Magazine Der Spiegel said this meant an additional reduction compared to already existing plans of 3 GW lignite and 4 GW hard coal capacity. The commission also recommends switching Germany’s “grid reserve” capacity, currently at 2.3 gigawatts (GW), from coal to gas.

2023-2030

For the period from 2023 to 2030, the report says that coal-fired power generation should fall to a maximum of 9 GW in lignite and 8 GW hard coal. This would amount to a reduction of capacity by 10.9 GW lignite and 14.7 GW hard coal compared to 2017. The commission says the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions over the coming years should happen “as continuously as possible.” In 2025 a “substantial interim step” should take place, reducing at least 10 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, ideally through “an innovation project”.

The report says that the measures mean that the energy sector is going to “contribute substantially” to achieving Germany’s 2020 target of reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels and “reliably” ensure attainment of the sector’s 2030 target.

It states that a review of the coal exit roadmap and the measures carried out until then will take place in 2023, 2026 and 2029. “This is necessary to adequately asses the ramifications of the 2022 nuclear exit and of the decommissioning [of coal capacity] implemented by that time.”