The escalation in Ukraine and its impact on Russian energy supplies could lead to the German coal phase-out being reconsidered.

It is legally scheduled to last until 2038, but the traffic light coalition wants to bring it forward to 2030 in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more quickly.

This acceleration could now be in jeopardy, especially since lignite is the only domestic energy source that is sufficiently available and is also suitable for safeguarding against "dark doldrums".

Germany is the world's largest producer of lignite, ahead of China.

Their carbon dioxide emissions are significantly higher than those of gas and hard coal, but these fuels have to be imported, mainly from Russia.

risk of security of supply

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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The most important producer of coal is North Rhine-Westphalia, where half of Germany's lignite is mined.

The Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy there, Andreas Pinkwart (FDP), told the FAZ: "The fundamental change in the foreign and security policy situation in Europe requires a rethinking of energy policy." Reduce Russia “quickly and attach greater importance to the security and affordability of energy,” said Pinkwart: “All conceivable options must be weighed up for this.

There shouldn’t be any bans on thinking.”

The liberal politician recalled that the law ending coal-fired power generation definitely provides for steps to avert dangers to security of supply.

The Federal Network Agency must now examine "whether the current situation represents a new situation in terms of security of electricity supply and the phase-out of coal and whether security of supply in the electricity sector can continue to be guaranteed even as the phase-out of coal progresses".

If this investigation showed that the planned phase-out path could no longer be pursued with "supply security", the course would have to be reconsidered.

It would then be up to the federal government to examine whether the shutdown of such hard coal plants, whose decommissioning has already been awarded but not yet completed, "could not be temporarily suspended or whether a timely transfer of the plants to the capacity reserve is possible".

Pinkwart not only wants to give the coal piles more time, but also the lignite.

"Adjustments to the federal lignite phase-out path as a last resort cannot be ruled out," he said.

"For example, a temporary transfer of lignite units that are about to be shut down to the security reserve would be conceivable."

Saxony-Anhalt also wants to suggest rethinking accelerated lignite decommissioning.

The third district state is Brandenburg.

The head of the BDEW energy association, Kerstin Andreae, made it clear: "The shutdown of coal-fired power plants planned for this year is currently out of the question." However, it is unclear what medium- and long-term effects the current conflict will have on the coal phase-out and German energy policy as a whole will have overall.

Stefan Meister, energy expert at the Society for Foreign Policy DGAP, spoke of a "basic problem that the energy transition was developed with simultaneous coal and nuclear phase-out on cheap Russian gas".

This option is gone: "Germany must diversify away from Russian gas, Russian coal and Russian oil, build an LNG terminal as soon as possible and reconsider the energy transition in its current form." The Federal Republic cannot at the expense of French nuclear power and energy transition using Polish coal-fired power if they opt out of these two options themselves.

"Therefore the question is whether the German nuclear reactors should run longer and whether it is actually realistic to phase out coal by 2030," says the expert.