Merkel’s Green Shift Forces Germany to Burn More Coal

An article putting the opening of Germany's latest generating plant, a 2200MW capacity lignite-fired one, in a broader perspective of Germany's energy transition - apparently a transition to more open pit mining and lignite (29% more CO2 emssions than hard coal).

Merkel’s Green Shift Forces Germany to Burn More Coal - Bloomberg:

Germany’s largest utilities RWE and EON AG (EOAN) are shunning cleaner-burning natural gas because it’s more costly, while the collapsing cost of carbon permits means there’s little penalty for burning coal. Wind and solar projects, central to Germany’s plans to reduce nuclear energy and cut the release of heat- trapping gases, can’t produce electricity around the clock.
“Angela Merkel’s policy has created an incentive structure which has the effect of partially replacing nuclear with coal, the dirtiest fuel that’s responsible for much of the growth in the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions since 1990,” Dieter Helm, an energy policy professor at the University of Oxford, said by phone Aug. 17. Building new coal stations means “locking them in for the next 30 years” as a type of generation, Helm said.
Germany’s increasing coal consumption is part of a global return to the fossil fuel that’s cheaper than most alternatives. The amount of coal burned worldwide rose 5.4 percent to account for 30 percent of total energy use last year, the highest proportion since 1969, according to BP Plc (BP/) data...
EON generated 10 percent more electricity from burning coal in the first half than in the same period a year ago. RWE’s coal-fired power output in Germany rose by 12 percent in the same period.

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