German utilities cautiously welcomed plan to phase out coal from 2030

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German utilities cautiously welcomed plan to phase out coal from 2030

Power turbine turbines are pictured at the 'Amrumbank West' offshore windpark in the northern sea near the island of Amrum, Germany on Thursday, September 4, 2015. REUTERS Morris Mac Matzen (2000)

FRANKFURT, Oct 18 Reuters : German utilities on Monday cautiously welcomed the newly formed government's climate protection plan but warned that more support for renewables and gas-to-power plants was needed to ensure security of supply as coal burning is phased out.

The draft agreement published on Friday by the so-called traffic light coalition of centre-left Social Democrats SPD Greens and business-friendly Free Democrats said that ideally an exit from coal should be moved forward to 2030 from 2038. read more

It called for more renewable and wind power to be brought in, as Germany plans to get out of nuclear by the end of next year. Ahead of the election utilities said if more funds were needed and clarity would be needed to implement alternative forms of power. The coal exit can only work with a sufficient expansion of renewables and gas-to-electric power plants to ensure the security of supply, said the utility industry association BDEW.

The 2030 date is not unrealistic but, with a massive and clearly faster renewable build-out, we need new energy-to-gas power plants to balance grids when wind and sunshine are lacking at short notice to cover bottlenecks, it said.

EnBW added it was looking into converting power plants running on fossil gas to fully equipped power plants to generate clean hydrogen generated from wind and sunshine in the distant future. RWE RWEG.DE said it welcomed speedier approval procedures for renewables, on which it is keen to move faster to leave its activities in imported brown coal and domestic hard coal behind.

Activist shareholder Enkraft Capital said RWE needed to accelerate its efforts to pull out of lignite operations, where RWE is active in both mining and generation.

In Germany, lignite was said as a clear political and social consensus that the phase-out of this element should be accelerated, it said. The board of RWE appears to be lagging behind momentum. A purely renewable energy focusd RWE will be rated substantially higher than the company in its current structure, it said.