Germany is likely to delay its phase-out of coal-fired power plants amid the country’s ongoing energy crisis, the country’s chancellor has announced.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s coalition government, confirmed this week that attempts to shift the country away from fossil fuel and nuclear power had left gaps in the energy grid that could not yet be filled by renewables.
As such, the planned total decommissioning of the country’s environmentally unfriendly coal-fired power plants would likely be pushed back beyond the initially planned 2038 deadline.
“We may have to keep existing coal-fired power plants online longer,” the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician said at a conference hosted by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
“I am not prepared to jeopardise the core of our energy supply simply because we agreed on unrealistic phase-out dates years ago.”
While part of Germany’s current energy crisis is the result of the destruction of the country’s nuclear power plants at the hands of the previous left-wing coalition, Merz once again confirmed that there were no plans to reintroduce the technology to the country.
He went on to tell conference attendees that he had hopes nuclear fusion could eventually be introduced as a cleaner alternative to the more traditional fission form of atomic power.
Fusion power — which traditionally involves the forcible combination of hydrogen isotopes to produce energy — has yet to be proven to be a viable method of power generation, with the most optimistic estimates suggesting that the earliest a commercial fusion reactor could hit the market is 2036.
Merz’s announcement that Germany would continue relying on coal to generate power comes as his CDU party comes under increasing pressure from the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Polls now regularly see the two political factions overtake one another as the most popular party in the country, with a recent INSA survey putting both the Christian Democrats and AfD at 26 per cent of public support.