Germany’s stance on coal fired generation

The outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict in February saw Europe’s energy supply pushed into a precarious state. For Germany, this triggered a U-turn on commitments to move away from coal power: retired coal-fired power plants were brought back onto the grid and imports of coal increased. Germany relies on imports of hard coal and extracts lignite from mines within the country, with these two types of coal producing over 30% of all electricity in 2022. While other European countries made less damaging changes in response to the energy crisis, only Germany’s coal relapse was deemed “significant” by the International Energy […]