Status: 02/26/2023 09:41 a.m
Coal has recently become more important again for Germany’s energy supply. Deutsche Bahn doubled its transports with coal trains. On average, 30,000 tons are transported to large power plants every day.
According to Deutsche Bahn, the amount of coal transported by rail through Germany has doubled in recent months. Since October, trains have been bringing an average of 30,000 tons of coal every day from the seaports of the North Sea to around 15 large power plants throughout Germany. Some of the freight trains also use so-called energy corridors and can primarily travel through the rail network. Deutsche Bahn announced that there were no significant interactions with other train traffic.
As a result of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, coal and oil have regained importance for Germany’s energy supply. To ensure that these additional transports reach their destination on time on the already heavily used rail network, they are temporarily given priority. In order to be able to transport the required quantities, the railway subsidiary DB Cargo has made more than 1,000 suitable wagons that were already on the sidings ready for use again.
Originally, an average of 50 trains carrying hard coal ran on the German rail network every week. With 20,000 DB Cargo freight trains, the doubling of the past few months is hardly significant. A large part of the transported coal is loaded onto the trains in the ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. One focus of the routes then leads to power plants in southern Germany and Saarland.
Russia still the most important coal supplier in 2022
Last year, Germany increased its imports of hard coal by eight percent to 44.4 million tons as a result of the war, as reported by the “Bild” newspaper, citing calculations by the Association of Coal Importers (VDKI). According to this, Russia was still the most important supplier for Germany in 2022 with 13 million tons. Compared to 2021, hard coal imports from Russia have already fallen by 37 percent. The import of Russian coal into the EU has been banned since August 2022 because of the Ukraine war.
The second most important supplier country in 2022 was the USA with 9.4 million tons. The volume increased by 32 percent compared to the previous year. It is followed by Colombia with 7.2 million tons and Australia with 6.3 million tons. Coal imports from Colombia tripled. Imports of coal from South Africa to Germany increased even more.