Germany Plans Boom in Coal Power Plants

Despite the Chancellor's push for climate protection, energy companies' plans for 26 new coal-fired power plants are likely to win approval

by Roland Nelles

Everyone in Germany is talking about climate protection -- everyone, that is, except for energy companies. They're planning to build dozens of new coal-fired power plants -- with the support of the governing coalition in Berlin.

The environment certainly seems to be in safe hands at the German chancellery in central Berlin, located next to the leafy Tiergarten park. Global warming and climate change is German Chancellor Angela Merkel's current favorite topic.

"The situation is threatening. There are fewer and fewer glaciers in the mountains. Storms are getting stronger," she lectures one audience. "We have to change course now," is another typical statement.

But it's a different story just a few kilometers away in a decrepit industrial park in the eastern Berlin neighborhood of Lichtenberg. There, energy provider Vattenfall is planning a project that hardly seems compatible with Merkel's grand plans for saving the climate.

The company wants to build a new coal-fired power plant there by 2012. The plan is for the new plant to burn up two million tons of Polish coal a year and provide a solid 800 megawatt electricity output, in addition to 600 megawatts of heat.

That's nice for Vattenfall, but less so for the climate. The power plant will also churn out a good five million tons of CO2 every year, according to preliminary estimates -- and it will do so right under the nose of Angela Merkel.

The chancellor is caught in the climate trap. She's presenting herself as the world's most active climate protector, both on the international stage and back home. Acting as European Council president at a summit the week before last, she

won a commitment from all 27 member countries to implement a 20 percent reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. Germany alone will reduce its CO2 emissions by 40 percent, if the government has its way. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has set a record by announcing a 60 percent decrease.

Experts at Berlin's Environment Ministry have now determined 20 problem areas where the government is either already active or plans to become active in the future. The transition to a motor vehicle tax that takes account of CO2 emissions is one of these problem areas, as are programs for the refurbishment of buildings and a new energy-saving directive. Next month, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel wants to present his plans in a government statement provisionally titled "Climate Protection Agenda 2020." Merkel is planning to present an overall model that builds on Gabriel's statement before the end of the year.

A DIRTY BUSINESS
It all sounds good. But no one knows whether it will really be enough. Moreover, one of the greatest climate-related problems -- the current boom in the construction of new coal-fired power plants -- has only been addressed vaguely or in a half-hearted manner by the people involved. The Vattenfall project in Berlin is only one example of a larger trend. Utility companies want to set up a total of 26 new coal-fired power plants in Germany during the coming years.

In the long term, the power plants will replace older, dirtier plants. But that doesn't alter the fact that the plans are a direct contradiction of the climate goals formulated by Merkel. While emissions are practically zero in the case of nuclear energy, and while a natural gas-fired plant produces just 428 grams of CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour, a black coal power plant churns a solid 949 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere. The figure for lignite or brown coal -- 1,153 grams -- is even worse.

Estimates by climate protection experts such as Rainer Baake from German Environment Aid (DUH) suggest the new power plants will release at least 150 million tons of CO2 every year. Their output corresponds to only "about a fifth of the output of the power plants currently in place in Germany, but their carbon dioxide output is equal to more than half of the pollutant output allowance granted all power plants for the 2008-2012 period,"