German 20% coal surge threatens climate goals – Agora

Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions totalled 761m tonnes last year, 5m tonnes short of the 2022 target, as well as the 2020 goal to cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels, Agora said.

The country will now have to step up efforts to reach the 2030 and 2040 targets to cut emissions by at least 65% and 88% below 1990 levels, respectively.

Last year, the government permitted the temporary return of around 10 GW of reserve hard coal, lignite and oil-fired capacity to the power market to curb gas usage in the face of sharply reduced supplies from Russia – in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Coal-fired power generation jumped 20% on the year to 60 TWh and lignite output rose 7% to 109 TWh, as the more heavily polluting fuel saw profit margins improve relative to gas, Agora data showed.

Gas-fired output, meanwhile, dropped 16% to 75 TWh, while nuclear production was halved to 33 TWh due to the closure of 4 GW of capacity last year.

The government still intends to phase out coal as a power source by 2030, despite the recent increase in generation.

Renewable buildout “crisis”

Simon Mueller, director at Agora, also warned that Germany “is heading for a massive gap in the expansion of renewables” and that there was a “crisis” in the onshore wind sector, where capacity only rose by 2 GW last year.

Renewable capacity growth had to be tripled from present levels to reach the 2030 target for increasing the share of renewable energy in power demand to 80%.

Nevertheless, total renewable generation in Germany surged to a new annual record high of 248 TWh last year, up 10% from 2021. Yet, this was mainly due to favourable weather conditions rather than policies supporting the buildout of new capacity, Agora said.