“Where our coal comes from”
After years of rising hard coal import volumes due to the closing of domestic mines, Germany seems to decrease its reliance on the fossil fuel, Andreas Macho writes in business weekly WirtschaftsWoche. While Germany continues to be Europe's biggest hard coal importer, a decrease in volume in 2016 might be a first sign that the trend is reversed, he writes. Fossil energy utility Uniper expects import volumes to fall in the future and market researcher AG Energiebilanzen says power production from hard coal in Germany was in decline last year, Macho writes. But Frank Peter of energy think tank Agora Energiewende* says the future of hard coal in the country depended on two factors: Whether hard coal will be phased-out alltogether and how the gas price develops.
Read the article in German here.
For background, see the CLEW factsheet Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.
*Like the Clean Energy Wire, Agora Energiewende is a project funded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Climate Foundation.