Germany pledges to abandon coal by 2038 with a wider plan to become carbon-free energy system by 2050
Germany will conduct a series of tenders between 2020 and 2027. (Credit: catazul from Pixabay)
Germany’s energy regulator Bundesnetzagentur has reportedly announced that the marketing of about 4,788MW of hard coal-fired power generation capacity will end from early next year.
The move comes as the regulator seeks to comply with Germany’s policy to end carbon-polluting capacity out of the market, reported Reuters.
Earlier, Germany announced plans to conduct a series of tenders between 2020 and 2027 to reduce coal-based electricity generation in hard coal and small-scale lignite plants.
As a result, Bundesnetzagentur launched the tender to allow coal-fired power plant operators to compete for financial compensation to reduce 4GW of generation capacity. This was closed in September 2020.
Tender round excluded plants located in southern region
Bundesnetzagentur said that the operators are allowed to fix a maximum price of €165,000 per MW of generation capacity in the auctions.
Bundesnetzagentur regulator head Jochen Homann was quoted by the news agency as saying: “The tenders have met with a positive response from the operators. The round was clearly oversubscribed.”
The average payment to be made to operators to close coal-fired power plants is €66,259/MW while the bids ranged between €6,047/MW and €150,000.
Germany aims to abandon coal by 2038 with a wider plan to become carbon-free energy system by 2050.
The tender round excluded plants located in the “southern region” – the area of Germany roughly south of the river Main. The next round of tender is scheduled to launch on 4 January 2021.
Germany also plans to close hard coal plants after 2027, without offsets.