THE GREEN LEADER: GERMANY PLANS 26 NEW COAL-FIRED POWER STATIONS

THE GREEN LEADER: GERMANY PLANS 26 NEW COAL-FIRED POWER STATIONS

UPI, 13 April 2007

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/energywatch/features/article_1291100.php/Germany_plans_26_coal_plants

By Stefan Nicola

BERLIN, Germany (UPI) -- The German government has in the past issued

strong calls to do more to combat climate change, yet the country`s

energy companies are planning to build more than 20 new coal-fired

power plants.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel lives in an apartment in what was once

the communist part of Berlin, right across from the city`s famous

Pergamon Museum. Her workplace, the chancellor`s office, is less than

a mile away. Here, Merkel in the past months has often talked about

the negative effects of climate change, at the moment her topic of

choice.

A former environment minister, Merkel has said measures to counter

climate change were among the top priorities of her European Union and

Group of Eight presidencies in the first half of 2007.

And indeed, earlier this year, she managed to convince fellow EU

leaders to agree to a binding set of targets aimed at combating

climate change: EU states would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20

percent, raise the share of renewable energy sources to 20 percent and

increase energy efficiency by 20 percent, all by 2020. The EU even

proposed a 30 percent cut of CO2 emissions if the world`s biggest

polluters, namely the United States and China, followed suit.

Yet while Merkel has gained international praise for her initiatives,

things at home look a bit gloomier. In Lichtenberg, a Berlin district

just a few minutes away from her apartment, German energy giant

Vattenfall plans to build a coal-fired power plant, a major producer

of greenhouse gases.

And the Lichtenberg plant, to be completed by 2012, will not remain

the only fossil fuel-fired plant to be raised in Germany.

Aside from Vattenfall, Germany`s other three energy giants -- Eon, RWE

and EnBW -- have plans of their own. All in all, no less than 26 power

plants burning either hard (anthracite) coal or brown (lignite) coal

will be built in the coming years, German news magazine Der Spiegel

said.

Coal-fired plants in German on average emit 1,050 grams of CO2 per

kilowatt hour, compared to 428 grams for gas-fired plants, according

to the German environment group BUND. The plants would jointly emit

some 150 million tons of CO2 per year, roughly the same amount than

Switzerland`s entire energy sector.

'If all of those plants end up being installed, there is no way we can

reach our climate protection goals for reducing emissions,' Reinhard

Loske, a climate expert for the Green Party parliamentary group,

recently told Deutsche Welle Online. 'No one who takes climate change

seriously can now accept over 20 coal-fired power plants being built

in this country.'

Yet members of the German government have defended the new

investments.

'The new plants to be built in Germany are equipped with most modern

technologies,' German Economy Minister Michael Glos told mass daily

Bild last Sunday.

RWE and Vattenfall have said the new coal-fired plants will replace

older, dirtier plants that will soon go offline, and vowed to also

work on technologies to build the world`s first CO2 free coal-fired

plants.

The struggle over the future of coal in Germany is heavily loaded; the

country has significant resources, and prices for imported lignites

(from South Africa and nearby Poland) are much cheaper compared to oil

and gas. Today, more than a quarter of German electricity is generated

by burning coal.

Merkel in the past has said clean goal technologies were important for

Germany`s future energy mix. Moreover, she knows the 26 new plants

(for an estimated $40 billion) will secure domestic jobs, especially

as they are built in economically weaker regions such as North Rhine

Westphalia.

Germany`s Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel (of the Social

Democratic Party, or SPD), an advocate of renewable energy sources,

would rather see wind, solar and hydro power plants built, but he

hasn`t protested so far. Observers say Gabriel knows that abolishing

coal would mean a resurrection of nuclear energy, which the Gabriel

and the SPD want to phase out by 2021.

--

There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling

the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their

cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not

on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away

with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone

are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices

me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.

"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.

--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette

daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net