German army exits hard coal heating

Germany's armed forces are phasing out the use of hard coal for heating. The last heating system using hard coal in Bavarian barracks will be replaced by a system using biogas supplemented by natural gas for peak demand in winter, according to Swedish utility Vattenfall, which has been contracted for the installation. The new system has a 5 megawatt (MW) capacity and will save around 3,000 tons of CO2 per year. The project "will further increase the above-average share of renewable energies for the armed forces' heating supply in Bavaria”, said Jürgen Bertelsbeck, who is in charge of heating at the German army, the Bundeswehr. "In addition to the many renewable energy projects in our own operations, cooperation with civilian companies is an important building block for achieving our climate targets."

A government commission agreed in early 2019 that Germany as a whole should phase-out both hard coal and lignite (brown coal) by 2038 the latest. In 2018, coal still acccounted for over 35 percent of Germany's power mix.