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Will the early phase-out of coal also affect the East German regions? Some would like to end the discussion. Others are demanding more speed from the federal government.
Actually, the paper should have been available long ago. When the federal and state governments agreed to phase out coal by 2038, it was legally stipulated that this phase-out and its framework conditions should be regularly reviewed. A first evaluation should appear in August 2022. But that is still missing today.
The leading Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate had postponed it as a result of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis. New dates in the spring and then in the fall of this year were missed. It is currently said that the report should be “completed as quickly as possible,” according to a ministry spokesman.
worry about “market-driven” Exit
This means that the discussion continues to smolder as to whether the phase-out can and should be presented for 2030. This has already been decided for the Rhenish lignite mining area. However, talks for the Lusatian and Central German regions failed due to resistance from the affected states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt – and from the Czech EPH group, which owns the operators LEAG and MIBRAG.
The evaluation could pave the way for a new attempt. Finally, the traffic light decided to also check whether an exit in 2030 could be implemented. For example, when structural change progresses and security of supply is guaranteed. An earlier exit is also “necessary to comply with climate protection goals,” according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Parliamentary State Secretary Michael Kellner sees coal already on the decline. Various forecasts suggest that it will become unprofitable around 2030. Then the exit would not come as planned, but “market-driven” earlier, said the Green politician Kellner recently in the Bundestag. You have to “take precautions” for this.
Also Power plant strategy missing
Brandenburg’s left-wing member of the Bundestag, Christian Görke, shares Kellner’s analysis, but demands more speed, for example in the evaluation. Görke too tagesschau.de: “This is the only way to get clarity for people and companies.” At the moment, people in Lusatia are “fed up” with “these amateurs in the federal government”.
Görke points out further problems: As the Ministry of Transport informed him, the planning phase for an important structural change project, the expansion of the Berlin-Cottbus-Görlitz railway line, has just been extended by three years. Completion: after 2040.
And there is still no federal power plant strategy. This also had to be postponed recently. One reason for this: The Ministry of Economics and Climate Change was dealing with the consequences of the Karlsruhe constitutional ruling on the Climate and Transformation Fund.
The strategy is intended, among other things, to regulate how several hydrogen-capable gas power plants can be quickly built in Germany. In the future, these will provide the base load for a network that is otherwise primarily powered by wind and solar power. This would be an important prerequisite for the coal phase-out.
Union for stopping the discussion
The Union in the Bundestag, on the other hand, is calling for an end to the discussion. In November she requested that the federal government end “the uncertainty among people in the regions caused by contradictory political signals.”
“On the whole, the structural change is going well,” said Brandenburg CDU member of the Bundestag Knut Abraham tagesschau.de. There is no reason to “wantly” shorten the periods by eight years. Representatives of the Lusatian municipalities expressed similar views.
Traffic lights sometimes move away
Meanwhile, pressure in the traffic lights only comes from the Greens. The coalition partners are adopting a different tone. In the Bundestag, Hannes Walter, speaking for the SPD, said that an early exit was “currently not even up for debate politically.”
The parliamentary managing director of the FDP parliamentary group, Torsten Herbst, said that with the end of Russian gas deliveries and the nuclear phase-out, “an earlier phase-out of coal has become unrealistic”. Finance Minister Christian Lindner had previously questioned the 2030 target.
The green economic politician Bernhard Herrmann is nevertheless calm. He expects the coal phase-out evaluation and the power plant strategy to come in the first quarter of 2024. “It’s complex, and these things have to be reliable,” said Herrmann tagesschau.de. Everyone in the federal government is now asked to accelerate energy transformation and structural change.
changes at Billions in aid
There is agreement on making structural change aid more flexible. The Ministry of Economic Affairs wants the billions to be used more freely, regardless of the exit date. The coal countries want that too. At their request, the ministry is currently examining whether this is possible without changing the laws.
In addition, 1.75 billion euros are pending in a state aid law review by the EU Commission. The federal government wants to use the money to compensate the LEAG coal company for its exit from Lusatia. The funds are intended to be used to rehabilitate the old opencast mines.
One reason for the review, which has been going on for two years: the commission doubts whether the amount of compensation is justified. A company that only exits coal when it is no longer profitable will not lose any income for which it would have to be compensated. However, a similar payment to RWE has just been released by the Commission.