The European Commission has launched an investigation on Germany’s lignite phase-out plan, to confirm if the compensation granted to the operators of lignite-fired power plants for phasing out earlier involved state aid and if it was kept to the minimum necessary.
In January 2020, the government approved a draft law aiming at ending coal-fired power generation by 2038 and reached a €40bn agreement with 4 Länder (Brandenburg, Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony-Anhalt) on financial compensation and structural aid for coal and lignite producing regions, deriving from the closure power plants and related mines. In December 2020, the German government approved a contract that compensates power utilities for early closure of lignite-fired power plants. In June 2020, the German government endorsed a €4.35bn compensation package for RWE, Uniper, EnBW, Vattenfall, Steag and LEAG. State aid approval from the European Commission is required. In 2019, the country had a total installed capacity of 223 GW, including 51 GW of coal- and lignite-fired power plants.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.