Economy minister Altmaier defends Germany’s slow breakup with coal

The German economy and energy minister, Peter Altmaier, defended Germany’s continued reliance on coal, saying on public broadcaster ZDF it was the only industrialised country that already waved goodbye to nuclear energy generation. “80 percent of the people in this country believe this is the right thing to do,” Altmaier said. If Germany also shut down its coal plants in parallel, this would put power supply security at risk and have a substantial impact on power prices. “That’s why we have to do it organically,” the minister said. “Of course we all know that coal doesn’t have a future over the next 50 years,” he argued, adding that with 38 percent of Germany’s power supply coming from wind, solar, biogas and other renewable energy sources, it already boasted “a world record among industrialised countries.”

See the video in German here.

For background, read the articles Commission watch – Managing Germany’s coal phase-out and Germany’s coal exit commission extends work to 2019.