Could Geothermal Energy Rescue Germany's Fading Coal Towns?
Dangote's Dollar Shift Reveals Nigeria's Bigger Oil Problem Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… Europe’s largest economy is walking a precarious tightrope toward carbon neutrality, trying to balance energy security with climate goals as this summer’s heat waves create mounting pressure on the continent’s energy grids while simultaneously highlighting the importance of mitigating emissions.
The German government aims to source 100 percent of the national energy mix from renewables by 2035, but has hedged some of its energy-transition rhetoric in recent months against the backdrop of major energy market volatility.
Germany has made a legally binding pledge to phase out the dirtiest fossil fuel entirely by 2038, but there is cause for speculation that the government may be reconsidering its near-term strategy.
Back in March, when the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz began and thereby ushered inEurope’s third energy crisis in four years, Chancellor Friedrich Merz made his priorities clear: “We must supply this country with electricity.
I am not prepared to jeopardise the core of our industry simply because we have adopted phase-out plans that have become unrealistic.” However, even with the market volatility in mind, some experts think that timely the phase-out of coal in Germany is an economic inevitability, and could happen even sooner than the goal date.
Hauke Hermann, a senior researcher for energy and climate action at the Institute for Applied Ecology, thinks that coal will die out in Germany by 2032.
While some pundits havequestionedwhether the latest energy crisis will push Germany back to coal (and strengthen its dependence on natural gas), Hermann believes that the opposite is true, thanks in large part to the European Union’s emissions trading system or ETS: “Our electricity market models indicate that coal will be phased out faster than envisaged under the coal exit agreement, meaning the market is outpacing the schedule,” HermanntoldClean Energy Wire.
“This is due to comparatively low gas prices until recently, and higher ETS allowance prices.” However, Germany needs to replace that coal with clean energies instead of natural gas if it wants to achieve its decarbonization goals.
The country has already made great strides when it comes to expanding wind and solar capacity as it has attempted to wean itself off of Russian fossil fuel imports in recent years against the backdrop of the War in Ukraine.
But Germany will need to double down on clean energy expansion, and especially round-the-clock clean energy alternatives if the country has any hope of achieving a 100 percent renewable grid in less than ten years.
Capable of producing energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week with zero greenhouse gas emissions, geothermal could be a critical part of Germany's decarbonization strategy.
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