But he says this will occur, which is why the biggest utilities in Germany, E.ON and RWE, have decided to split their assets into new and old companies, jettisoning their old “centralised” generation assets to focus on a new business centred around solar, storage, smart grids and electric vehicles.

“The Energiewende requires a complete strategic reprioritization away from conventional generation and towards renewable energy so that the companies can prepare for the power system of the future,” Lewis says.

He believes that only a handful of coal plants would still be operating by 2030 – the Datteln 4 (1.1GW) and Maasvlakte 3 (1.1GW), and the Westfalen E (765MW) hard coal plants, all of which have very high efficiency rates of 46 per ent.

The only lignite plant still running would be the BoA 2 & 3 units at Neurath (2.1GW), which have a very efficiency rate for lignite plant of 43 per cent. The value of the brown coal generators for both E.ON and RWE would be wiped out completely, and considerably reduced for hard coal. The value of gas-fired generation, though, would increase.