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Brand letter to Altmaier: Ex-members of the coal commission fear delay in the coal withdrawal

2019-10-09T10:26:32.274Z


A government commission came up with a coalition exit plan in January - but the law is still missing. Now ex-members of the panel accuse Minister Altmaier of delaying the proceedings.



Five environmentalists who were members of the so-called coal commission fear that the start of the coalition exit will be delayed. The committee has "compromised eight months ago, but there is still no draft for a coal exit law," says a letter to economics minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) and his undersecretary Andreas Feicht. "The timely implementation of the compromise of the Commission is at risk."

Author of the letter, which is available to the SPIEGEL, are the Green Party politician Reiner Priggen, BUND boss Hubert Weiger, the civic activist Antje Grothus, Greenpeace Managing Director Martin Kaiser and the chairman of the German conservation ring, Kai Niebert. They all belonged to the Commission "Growth, Structural Change and Employment" until January 2019, the coal commission. This had developed a concept for the coal exit, which the government wants to follow largely in the legislation. Accordingly, all coal power plants in Germany should be shut down by 2038 at the latest.

As the SPIEGEL learned from government circles, the Cabinet is currently aiming to finalize its exit law for hard coal and lignite on 20 November. The competent Federal Ministry of Economics did not confirm the concrete date on request - but referred to the climate package of the government, according to which the regulations to phase out the coal-fired power plant "in November" should be approved by the Cabinet.

A first bill to regulate the exit from the coal had already leaked in September, but this still lacked essential information. Negotiations between the government and the operators of the power plants are currently under way to phase out lignite.

Fear of the winter hole 2020

The five environmentalists ask Altmaier in their letter to present the law in October and to let it pass in the Cabinet. "If the Cabinet decides the law until the end of November, then it should be approved by Parliament in April or May," says Greenpeace CEO Kaiser.

This in turn threatens to delay the shutdown of the first hard coal miners, because this is regulated by a subsequent tendering process.

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PDF: Letter to AltmaierPDF size: 395 kB

"When the law comes into force, the Federal Network Agency must first determine how many gigawatts of power the hard coal-fired power plants have, which are then still on the grid," says Kaiser.

"It will not be until three months later that the first tenders will begin allowing power plant operators to submit bids on how high the premium they should receive for decommissioning their oilers," explains Kaier. "It can take up to another three months before individual operators receive the contract from the Federal Network Agency, and overall, this procedure is likely to take until the end of 2020."

The coal exit could thereby fall into a kind of winter hole. Because in the dark, cold months, the power consumption is highest, accordingly, particularly many reserves are required for the production. It is therefore not ruled out that the first hard coal-fired power plants will be closed down in the spring of 2021 via the tendering procedure, according to government circles.

Conflict with the nuclear phase-out?

But that could cause new conflicts in the energy system. After the proposal of the coal commission, which the federal government wants to follow to a large extent, until the end of 2022 coal rigs with an output of about 12.5 gigawatts will be shut down.

These include some old power plants that are scheduled to be phased out - but also coal-fired power plants with a capacity of 4.5 gigawatts, which will also be shut down via the tendering process.

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PDF: Draft Act to phase out hard coalPDF size: 25 MB

The remaining German nuclear power plants should also be shut down by the end of 2022, and many are also scheduled to be shut down in the last two years.

"If nothing happens in 2020, 2021 to 2022 there will be concentrated shutdowns of power plants," warns Kaiser. "That would be good neither for grid stability nor for climate protection."

Danger of fluctuating electricity prices

The coal commission also warned in its final report that electricity prices could rise as a result of the carbon leakage. She therefore proposed to create a balance that relieves companies and private households. This is possible, for example, through a reduction in network fees, which can make up about one fifth of the electricity price for private households.

If, however, in the years 2021 and 2022 a very large number of nuclear and coal-fired power stations go off line in a short time, the rise in electricity prices could possibly be even greater. It is also possible that prices will fluctuate more.

It had been "consensus in the Commission," that by 2020 at the latest, the first brown and hard coal power plants go from the network, "it says in the letter of the five ex-Commission members. From their point of view too late submission of the Kohlesusstiegsgesetzes is a "fatal signal, which endangers the existence of the coal compromise".

The Coal Commission had proposed to reduce the installed generation capacity from coal power plants to 30 gigawatts by 2022, to reduce it to 17 gigawatts by 2030, and finally to zero by 2038 at the latest.

Currently, 18.9 GW lignite-fired power plants and 21.4 GW hard coal-fired power plants are in the market, accounting for more than two thirds of emissions in the energy sector.

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2019-10-09

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