The German government gave the green light this Wednesday to the reactivation of power plants that work with Coal y Petroleum that are part of the energy reserve, as part of the package of measures to save gas for next winter.
The Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection, in charge of the green Robert Habeckpromoter of the measure, stressed that it is temporary and “will not affect” Germany’s “priority objective” of completing the coal phase out by 2030.
The regulation, which comes into force tomorrow, will allow a total of 27 plants that were not operating at the moment return to the electricity market on a limited basis until the beginning of next spring, specifically until April 30, 2023.
However, the reactivation is linked to the decree of the state of alarm that is part of the Emergency Plan for Gas, so lifting it would imply that the plants would have to be disconnected from the network beforehand.
8.5 additional gigawatts
On the one hand, 16 plants based on coal and mineral oils, which were disconnected from the network but were part of the reserve will be able to work again -if the operators so wish, since the measure is voluntary- starting tomorrow, Thursday, when the regulation comes into force.
These plants, most of which are concentrated in the south of Germany, have, according to the Ministry, a installed capacity of 4.3 gigawatts for coal plants and 1.6 for mineral oil plants.
To these must be added 11 coal plants that had to stop burning this material as of certain dates in 2022 and 2023 as part of the decarbonization process, which will now be able to extend their operations and will become part of the reserve.
The latter have an installed performance of an additional 2.6 gigawatts.
According to Habeck, the reactivation, made possible thanks to the approval last week in Parliament of the new Law on Replacement Power Plants, will save between 5 and 10 terawatt hours of natural gas in Germany and as many in the rest of Europe.
“We want to save gas now in the summer to fill our tanks for the winter,” declared the minister, who has explained on several occasions that in order to have enough gas to meet the needs of households and industry, it is necessary to reduce the percentage used to produce electricity.
12.6% of gas consumption in Germany was used in 2021 for electricity generation, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
Lack of coal and personnel
However, according to the German media, the plan to replace the use of gas for electricity production with the reactivation of coal-fired power plants presents some difficulties, since the plants are not prepared to resume operations in the short term.
Thus, some operators have warned that the plants that were to be disconnected this year do not have sufficient coal reserves or cannot transport them quickly to the plants due to bottlenecks in the logistics sector.
In other cases, lack of qualified personnel so that the plants are able to operate at full capacity, since in particular those that were already disconnected only have staff reduced to a minimum.
This suggests that, although the plants are authorized to resume operations starting this Thursday, those that decide to return to the market will not do so immediately and possibly not at full capacity.
Gas saving against the clock
Beyond the reactivation of coal plants, the German Government has adopted measures to facilitate and accelerate imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), although due to the need to build the necessary infrastructure, these will not take effect immediately.
For this reason, the German Executive under the command of the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz is promoting the reduction of gas consumption in the industry, for example through a system by which companies that want to give it up for a few months will be compensated.
According to government data, since the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24, Germany has managed to restrict gas consumption by 14% compared to the same period last year.
According to Habeck, the gas tanks are being filled at the rate of 1.3 or 1.4% a day, but even so the minister says that it is necessary to prepare for a complete cut off of the Russian gas supply through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, which is currently not operational due to annual maintenance work.