Blog

Katja Müller
16th April 2019

On Friday, December 21st, 2018 Germany’s last hard coal mine closed down. The federal president and several state ministers came for the official closing ceremony at the Prosper-Haniel mine. Emotional speeches and hand-shakes with miners signalled the end of the long tradition of black coal mining in Germany.

German black coal mining had turned in to a non-profitable business, that could not compete with imports of the resource. The German government had prolonged the close-down of the mines through subsidies, as a political decision trying to cushion the hardships that the closures mean for miners, the companies, and coal mining regions. In 2007, it set the exit date for 2018; and Prosper-Haniel was the last of the German black coal mines to stop working.

In 2022, a similar closing ceremony might take place at one of the six remaining nuclear power plants, because the German government decided in 2011 to exit from nuclear energy.

Five years later, in late 2016, the government introduced the ‘capacity reserve’, a programme to slowly shut down units of coal fired power plants, but keeping them in a stand-by mode for a few years, paying the owners of the plants.

And eventually, in January 2019, the so called ‘Coal Commission’ announced an exit of all coal mining (aiming at lignite mining) and coal power generation across Germany in 2038. This affects all ten currently operating lignite mines and all 100+ (lignite and hard) coal fired power plants.

The Coal Commission – officially the ‘Commission for growth, structural change and employment’ – is a board appointed by the federal government in 2018 to strategize the future of coal. They also recommended that the Hambach forest, the site of heavy anti-coal-protests in 2018, is not to be cut down, and that the states with most lignite mining are to receive funds to cushion the expected structural change. On April 4th the government announced an immediate action programme with a budget of 260 million Euro, of which a large share is for transport infrastructure and broadband internet expansion in the states of Brandenburg, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Legislative measures have also played a role in the rise of renewables. The 1990s’ power input law and its successor the renewable energy law (the EEG) in 2000 allow or privilege feeding renewable power into the grid. It guaranties renewable energy operators a feed-in tariff (a fixed sale price for renewable energy), which supported the construction of renewable power plants, especially solar and wind ones. Furthermore, biomass fuel generation has been supported since 2007 through a quota, and mechanisms to stimulate renewable heat generation were legislated in 2009.

Looking at this list of actions on decarbonisation and denuclearisation, it would appear that Germany is well on its way to the Energiewende, the energy transformation, eliminating the hazards of nuclear accidents, and changing from coal to renewable energy production. Looking at the numbers supports this: Renewables’ share in electricity production continues to rise, peaking at 37.8%, or 428 tWh, in 2018 (as compared to 4.1% in 1997). At times it climbs to 100% – as in the morning hours of January 1st or the early afternoon hours of May 1st, when strong winds or plenty of sun made for 100% of Germany’s energy needs being covered through renewables.

Trajectories with push-backs

Although these numbers sound good, they are only part of the picture. In the other two energy sectors – heat and transport – the share of renewables has been stagnating for years, at 13% and 5%, respectively. Investment in solar has been on a decline since 2010, and wind is likely to follow suit with the latest amendment to the EEG in 2017.

The new regulation transformed the feed-in tariff from a fixed remuneration rate to a bidding process where the lowest quoted rates would get the tender. This leads to slower amortization of investment costs, and ends up in preferencing large companies over small community-related or owned corporations.

Besides that, the expansion of high voltage lines and energy storage systems is not occurring fast enough. This infrastructure is needed to transport electricity produced in the country’s north to the more heavily industrialized south. Civil protests and political blocking is slowing down construction and increasing costs for these power supply lines.

The transport sector is another problem child. Being highly symbolic of German industrialism and quality exports, it is one of the sectors that seems to enjoy a jester’s license. Despite numerous scandals on fraud with exhaust gas amounts, the government – let alone the industry – seems unwilling to transform car production. It is – to put it frankly – very reluctant to substantially move towards electric mobility or invest in public transport. The government introduced subsidies for the sale of electric cars, announcing that this should result in one million electric cars on Germany’s roads by 2020. But the meagre sum is currently 83,000. And large scale truck companies, like the national mail (Deutsche Post), eventually bought a small start-up to develop an electric fleet on its own, after large scale German car companies were unwilling or unable to do the same for them.

The bottom line is that Germany is missing its self-set climate targets. The aim was to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 40% as compared to 1990 levels. In summer 2018, the environment minister declared that it will only reach a reduction of 32% – even worse than the 35% anticipated earlier that year.

Attempts to change course

This slow-down does not imply a reversal. As mentioned in the beginning, the Energy transformation (Energiewende) has been introduced and continues to play a role, even though its pace has decelerated. Angela Merkel, once called a ‘climate chancellor’, has clearly gambled away this title. But civil society remains strong, and the environment and the climate are prominent issues.

Neither the EEG nor the phase out of nuclear happened overnight, nor as detached political ideas. They are not least the result of the durable environmental movement that started in the 1970s. The then focus on transport of nuclear waste and forest dieback has shifted today to coal-fired power generation and global warming. The current generation of environmental activists is nationally and internationally well connected, works through climate camps, large scale coal mine blockades, or long-term occupation of to-be-cleared forest. They draw on a greater environmental consciousness of today’s society and profits form experiences and know-how of the movement’s older generation.

The recent ‘Friday for Future’ protests, where school children flock the streets to demonstrate for serious and meaningful environmental protection, show that the environmental movement will not have a problem of succession. Decarbonisation has started, but is not at all yet where it should be. This current state of things continues to be challenged.