Hard coal will continue to be burned in Block 2 of Munich’s thermal power station north at least until the 2023/24 winter season to generate electricity and heat. What the Munich city councilors officially decided on Wednesday in the Economic Committee met with skepticism at the site of the power plant in Unterföhring. “We’re not happy about that,” says Lothar Kapfenberger, head of the building department at the town hall. In view of the complex current global political situation, it is difficult to evaluate the decision of the public utility company from all sides, but the fact that coal is now to be used for at least a year longer is “a great pity”.
However, the outskirts community was not really satisfied with the prospect of converting Block 2 to natural gas firing, which Munich’s Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) and Stadtwerke boss Florian Bieberbach had actually announced for the coming autumn. Unterföhring would prefer it if the municipal utility covered its electricity and heat requirements as soon as possible with renewable energies, just as the community wants to do. Philipp Schwarz, spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the Unterföhring municipal council, had brought a joint geothermal project from Munich and Unterföhring into play in 2021.
“Security of supply is important.”
Wolfgang Stubenrauch from the “Raus aus der Steinkohle am HKW Nord” campaign group, which is one of the harshest critics of coal combustion, even shows understanding for the postponement of the conversion to natural gas operation in view of the Ukraine war. “Under these global political conditions, the decision of the municipal utility is correct, regardless of the technical conditions. Security of supply is important,” says Stubenrauch. However, the 77-year-old also sees many unanswered questions regarding the intended conversion from hard coal to natural gas as a fuel. Above all, Stubenrauch and his colleagues fear that a conversion could extend the service life of Block 2, which will then be gas-powered, beyond 2028. They are also demanding that Stadtwerke München provide better information about the operational safety of the system with gas firing.
The Munich ÖDP city councilor Tobias Ruff and Stefan Jagel from the left had complained in the economic committee that there was too little information about the changeover. The technical managing director of Stadtwerke Helge-Uve Braun had explained in the committee that Block 2 could already technically be driven 100 percent with gas. An expert opinion was drawn up after tests with the boiler manufacturer in November 2021. However, the community of Unterföhring has not yet received any further information on that report or the test results from the public utility company. For a long time, the municipal utilities themselves took the position that switching from coal to gas was technically and economically unfeasible. The municipality has therefore in turn written to the public utility company and asked for answers to open questions.
In view of the global political situation, it remains to be seen when the changeover to gas operation will actually take place. Building authority manager Kapfenberg from Unterföhring expresses the faint hope that the situation, which everyone does not want, could possibly have a positive effect: “Perhaps this will give us the impetus that we all work together to implement the goal of developing renewable energies more actively.”