(Bloomberg) -- German Economy Minister Robert Habeck raised further doubts over the country’s plans for an early phase-out of coal-fired power generation.
Asked at an industry conference in Berlin hosted by the Handelsblatt newspaper whether the 2030 target — eight years earlier than the original schedule — was in question, he answered, “Yes. For me, energy security always has absolute priority.”
Habeck’s ministry earlier this week dropped a plan for new gas-fired power plants, which are key to replacing the country’s coal-fired sites, as the measure couldn’t be voted on after the country’s three-party coalition collapsed last month.
Europe’s largest economy — which phased out nuclear power last year — wanted to build the hydrogen-ready plants to lower the energy sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and provide backup for rapidly expanding renewables. Habeck on Friday stressed that coal plants could only be taken offline if there’s sufficient back-up capacity.
“We can’t risk creating a situation — like the one that threatens to arise after the loss of Russian gas — through our own political decisions,” Habeck said. “It’s bad overall for climate protection reasons, but also for security of supply reasons, that we can’t bring the capacities to the market.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition had agreed to stop burning the fossil fuel by the decade’s end “ideally.” However, earlier this month, the economy ministry said in a report that “coal should be phased out at the beginning of the 2030s.”
Due to rising power demand and scarce back-up capacity, Germany’s energy regulator last year ordered several coal units to remain in backup until 2031.
The ministry today said that the government is still working toward reaching a coal exit in 2030, but stressed that there “is no way around flexible new capacities.”
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified a photograph as Robert Habeck.
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