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    Germany Should Shed 'Grotesque Climate Policy': Wintershall

Summary

The boss of German producer Wintershall has accused the government of subverting the original aims of climate policy by backing coal.

by: Mark Smedley

Posted in:

Natural Gas & LNG News, Europe, Security of Supply, Gas to Power, News By Country, Germany, Russia

Germany Should Shed 'Grotesque Climate Policy': Wintershall

Wintershall CEO Mario Mehren took aim at the new coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD whereby Germany will miss its own climate targets for 2020, saying it wouldn’t have happened if Berlin had supported gas-fired generation more.

Flawed market incentives have instead perverted the idea of the energy transition, he argued in a comment piece in influential German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 16.

"Today Germany is exporting significant amounts of coal[-fired power] to neighboring countries ‒ even at negative prices. This is grotesque in terms of climate policy," wrote Mehren.

CO2 emissions in Germany had remained almost unchanged at around 750mn tons per year since 2009, he said: "We’re seeing an energy transition that costs a lot, but unfortunately brings little.” Indeed Germany had to a large extent replaced nuclear power with coal power, he said.  "This absurdity has reached such proportions that Germany is exporting coal-fired power as surplus production," said Mehren, citing data from ERA Energy Research about rising power exports.

The original idea of the energy transition was to replace nuclear/coal with renewables/natural gas, but flawed incentives meant investment in modern gas-fired power plants was delayed, he argued: “We should therefore urgently return to the original idea behind the energy transition and use natural gas for climate protection.” Both Norway and Russia as gas exporters could play a role, he said.

On February 17 1993, so roughly 25 years ago, Gazprom was founded (as the successor to Russian gas exporter predecessor Soyuzgasexport), said Mehren, arguing it was a cause for reflection.

"Gazprom has always been a reliable energy partner to us Europeans,” said Mehren, overlooking a three-week period in January 2009 when it stopped all flows via Ukraine to Europe in midwinter over a dispute with Kiev, causing gas supply shortfalls particularly in eastern and southeast Europe. Partnership between Russia and the West was needed “if we want to plan our energy supply sensibly and achieve our climate goals,” he concluded. 

Gazprom's exports to Europe increased significantly in 2017, as the company exploited a gap in a resurgent European gas market that North African and Dutch gas proved unable to meet. Its Russian exports have continued to grow into 2018 too.