No Power

What to Know: Germany, already dealing with higher electricity prices, plans to shut down all of its coal-fueled power plants.

“Germany, one of the world’s biggest consumers of coal, will shut down all 84 of its coal-fired power plants over the next 19 years to meet its international commitments in the fight against climate change, a government commission said Saturday,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “The announcement marked a significant shift for Europe’s largest country — a nation that had long been a leader on cutting CO2 emissions before turning into a laggard in recent years and badly missing its reduction targets. Coal plants account for 40% of Germany’s electricity, itself a reduction from recent years when coal dominated power production.”

The TPPF Take: Germany will soon see that the cost of renewables goes up as they put more into the grid. The cause? Storage requirements, because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.

“In the past week alone, the share of Germany’s electricity provided by renewables ranged from 1 percent to 50 percent,” says Brent Bennett of TPPF’s Life: Powered project. “$45 billion may be enough to wind down Germany’s coal plants, but it will pale in comparison to the cost of energy storage required to overcome this variability in output without backup power from coal.”

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