Reuters report, in German: LINK) that the German federal government has reached an agreement with the states and energy utilities companies on payments of several billion euros to finance the German coal phase-out (Kohleausstieg).
The compensation for the utilities companies for abandoning brown coal will amount to 2.6 billion euros in the West and 1.75 billion euros in the East, said Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) on Thursday in Berlin.
"We will thus end the age of coal-fired power generation in a planned and economically sensible way. This is a great success", said Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU).
According to several reports, coal power is losing its economic ground, and a lot of infrastructures may one day actually become stranded assesst totgether with recent, ongoing, and planned oil invest in pipelines, harbor faciliteis and refinereies etc.
As detailed analysis by Carbon Tracker analysis, 60% of the global coal capacity is uneconomic on a long-run marginal cost basis. Theis means that in the absence of changing circumstances (i.e., lower costs and/or higher revenues), coal power is, and will continue to be, inherently risky business.
Carbon Tracker reports: "The trend is more widespread in liberalized markets, such as those in Western Europe, as wind and solar, with their near-zero marginal costs, drive power prices below the operating cost of coal generation. For example, based on a recent Carbon Tracker report, 79% of operating hard coal and lignite capacity in the EU28 is uneconomic. This dire situation contrasts with coal generators in South Korea, where all operators are cash-flow positive due to market structures that effectively guarantee a rate of return regardless of cost.[ii] Irrespective of whether plants are in liberalized or regulated markets, low-cost wind and solar is a megatrend coursing through regions at varying levels. As detailed in Figure 2, this trend has accelerated in 2019, to the extent where we now believe over 50% of global coal capacity has a higher marginal cost than the levelised cost of either solar PV, onshore wind, or offshore wind. Even nations such as Japan, which is known to have limited renewable resources due to topographical and land-use constraints, low-cost wind and solar could soon eclipse the economics of incumbent coal as early as 2024."
