The city of Munich’s exit from coal combustion will probably be delayed by at least another year. Economics officer Clemens Baumgärtner (CSU) will submit a corresponding application to the city council’s economics committee on Tuesday. In it, Baumgärtner pleads for Block 2 of the North power plant in Unterföhring to be switched from coal to natural gas for the 2024/25 heating period.
This measure was originally planned for last autumn, but was postponed to this year in spring 2022 due to the Ukraine war and the shortage of natural gas supplies from Russia. The CSU had applied for this at the time. Although a reduction in CO₂ emissions caused by coal is “fundamentally to be welcomed”, the reasoning said, she would rather have “a secure and affordable energy supply for Munich’s citizens and companies”.
“The forecast for this winter is still that there could be a shortage of natural gas,” explains Dominik Krause, spokesman for the Greens in the city council. Federal authorities and the Ministry of Economic Affairs continue to recommend that natural gas be used sparingly. For this reason, according to Krause, his party will be forced to support a decision to postpone the city’s coal phase-out, just like it did a year ago, although it is fundamentally urging that fossil fuels be avoided.
Dissenting voices can again be expected from the ÖDP/Munich list, as their spokesman Tobias Ruff confirmed. The refusal is only directed against the postponement, not in principle against the conversion of the power plant from coal to gas operation, as he explains. “Last winter we didn’t have the kind of emergency that was expected,” he explains, “and gas prices have fallen again.” Nevertheless, Ruff sees the fact that the HKW Nord is operated with natural gas only “as an interim solution with a clearly defined term”. In the long term he favors geothermal energy as a substitute for coal, which is why he calls for a massive expansion of the corresponding systems.
The ÖDP was once the driving force behind the “Raus aus der Steinkohle” referendum, in which a majority of Munich voters voted in late 2017 to shut down the hard coal block in the northern thermal power plant in Unterföhring by the end of 2022. After a lot of back and forth, Stadtwerke München (SWM), as the operator of the power plant, found a technical solution to keep the block running, but to convert it from coal to gas. A variant that is cheaper than building a completely new system. Shortly after that option was on the table, Russia’s attack on Ukraine created a new environment.
Whether the HKW Nord can be converted to natural gas at least in autumn 2024 is of course not yet certain. In Baumgärtner’s application, the municipal utilities are explicitly asked to “observe further developments and to refer the city council again to a critical forecast for the gas supply situation for the 2024/25 heating period in autumn 2023”. In other words: If it is foreseeable that natural gas will remain scarce and expensive, coal will probably continue to be burned to generate heat and electricity.