Coal Burns Brightly in German Electricity Mix

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - Germany burned more coal to generate electricity last year than any time in the past 24 years thanks to the phasing out of nuclear power and the availability of cheap coal imports.

Figures from the Working Group on Energy Balance show that coal - both bituminous (black coal) and the dirtier lignite (brown coal) - generated 45.5% of the country's electricity in 2013, up from 44% in 2012. Despite the country's drive into the renewable sector, cheap coal imports from the U.S. where shale gas is steadily replacing coal in the generation sector, have seen power utilities relying more on their coal-fired plants at the expense of their cleaner gas-fired plants which are more costly to run thanks to high gas prices in Europe.

The use of black coal-generated electricity increased last year by 8 billion kilowatt hours (KWh) to 124 billion KWh. Brown coal generated around 162 KWh last year, equivalent to about 25% of Germany's total electricity demand. This is up from 161 billion KWh in 2012 and, because of its high emissions, has led to an angry response from environmental groups. They are calling on the government to charge utilities more to operate coal-fired power stations, especially those burning brown coal.

Renewable energy such as wind, solar, hydropower and biomass, performed solidly in 2013, with their combined share rising to 23.4%, or 147 billion KWh. This represented a rise of just 1% over its share in 2012.

Despite Europe leading the world in the rollout of renewable energy, coal has been making a comeback in the past couple of years, having lost its dominant position to cleaner gas-fired plants. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), using additional data from Eurostat and the International Energy Agency (IEA), has shown that natural gas consumption in OECD-Europe, in contrast to the U.S., has been generally declining since 2011, while coal consumption has been increasing. Supply and demand factors for both gas and coal, alongside other economic constraints, are to blame.

In the U.K., for instance, coal remained the dominant fuel used for electricity generation in the first quarter of 2013, according to statistics on energy trends and prices produced by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). In 2012, coal's share of generation increased from 29.5% to 39.3%, its highest share since 1996. At the same time gas's share of generation fell from 39.9% to 27.5%, due to high gas prices. For additional information, see September 10, 2013, article - Coal Still Dominates U.K. Electricity Mix.

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