How Clean is ‘Clean’ for 26 New Coal-Fired German Power Plants?

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). The support for coal-fired power plant projects by German Chancellor, Angela Merkel illustrates the ambiguity contained in many clean power initiatives. Although, the 26 plants planned by the country’s power utilities Vattenfall (FRA:VTT) (Stockholm, Sweden), RWE (FRA:RWE) (Essen, Germany), E.on (NYSE:EON) (Dusseldorf, Germany) and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg (NYSE:EBK) (Kalsruhe, Germany), would use the latest clean technology to contain emission levels compared to the previous generation of power plants, the total of additional CO2 emissions from the new plants would exceed the existing levels produced by the country’s current thermal fleet.

In March, acting as European Council President, Merkel won a commitment from all 27 EU member countries to implement a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. Germany and the United Kingdom set themselves targets of 40% and 60% reductions respectively.

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia would be home to 13 of the 26 power plants, which are under construction or are at the planning stage. The state is densely populated and holds the largest coal reserves. RWE Power is looking to construct three of the plants and would invest $2.9 billion to construct two new optimized coal-fired units at the existing Neurath facility, which would start contributing power to the grid in 2010. RWE claims the new technology would reduce CO2 emissions by up to 3 million tons per unit annually through increased efficiencies. Currently Neurath produces 20.1 million tons of CO2 annually.

A plant planned in East Berlin by Vattenfall would burn up to 2 million tons of low-cost Polish coal per annum to provide 800 MW of electrical power and 600 MW of heat. Lignite, or brown coal, emits 1,153 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour generated, black coal is rated at 949 grams and hard coal at 750 grams. These outputs compared to 428 grams per kilowatt-hour for gas fired plants and almost zero for nuclear plants. Both RWE and Vattenfall have accepted that CO2 emissions must be reduced and have announced plans to build plants, which are CO2 free. These plants also would include CO2 storage. RWE has been operating the Niederaussem power plant using optimized technology since 2003.

For Merkel and the German government the new plant building program, importing a significant amount of coal from Poland and South Africa, would see the stimulation of $40 billion investments in the economy and provide thousands of jobs and energy security.

Against this, Rainer Baake from German Environment Aid (DUH) is quoted in Die Spiegel as suggesting that the new plants would release at least 150 million tons of CO2 annually, with output corresponding to about a fifth of the output of power plants currently in place. However, the CO2 output would equal more than half the pollutant allowance granted all power stations for the 2008-2012 period.

Federal Environment Agency experts estimate that replacement of old power plants by new generation coal-fired plants would result in a decrease of greenhouse gases by only 14%, which would make Merkel’s goal of a 40% CO2 reduction from 1990 levels difficult.

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