Germany forced to cancel coal goal

According to reports, Germany's ruling coalition plans to cancel its goal of realizing carbon neutrality before 2035, a major drawback for Europe's plan to realize carbon neutrality.

However, the interpretation is all wrong. First of all, Germany never planned to realize carbon neutrality before 2035. Its new climate change objective released in May 2021 says it plans to increase greenhouse gas emission cuts from 55 percent in 1990 to 65 percent in 2030, and reach carbon neutrality in 2045.

This is in accordance with the European Union's "Fit for 55" plan that just passed the European Parliament on June 22.

So what exactly is changing for Germany? It is about carbon neutrality in the energy sector, or in other words, about whether Germany will continue generating electricity from coal in the future.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had planned to stop generating electricity from coal in 2038, which was revised to 2030 by her successor. However, the new German ruling coalition did not anticipate a military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has had a big impact on Germany's energy supply.

By 2021, coal accounted for about 27 percent of the total electricity generated in Germany and natural gas 14.5 percent. Germany planned to import more natural gas from Russia via the Nord Stream 2 project to replace coal, but that was dropped as it joined the US sanctions against Russia. The other main channel, Nord Stream 1, is currently undergoing maintenance, arousing fears of gas from Russia running out in Germany.

That's why Germany has resumed generating more electricity from coal since June. It plans to restart generating more electricity from coal within six months with or without the EU Parliament's approval, so that the winter of 2022 does not end up being colder than 2021.

It is clearly a difficult path toward clean energy because of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.