What Germany actually means when it says "restarting" coal plants

There is a thread that gives the impression, although unintended, that Germany is restarting coal plants.

Well, that is the plan but what you do not know is: We generate about 6x more energy from hard and brown coal then nuclear energy. I noticed that in my screencap the values for coal do not show up propper but if you go to the website and hover your mouse, you can see that the thought

"Germany is restarting their coal plants lol and where is the coal coming from?"

is just wrong and jumping the gun.

Answer: From where it came the whole time, our very active coal mines.

In the below graphic that shows live data, I marked and translated the different energy sources. As you can see, coal is big time, much more than nuclear. But what about natural gas? It's a tiny amount! It's just the electricity generation of course. We fire up the coal plants so we can heat more with electricity and not burn Russian gas.



Here, look for yourself.
smard

Thank you for the attention, I hope I could clear up this misunderstanding. Any questions left?

So what do they actually mean anyway? 😀

And here I always thought kohl was kohl 🚬

originally posted by: xuenchen
So what do they actually mean anyway? 😀

They replace natural gas by coal for electric energy production, which leaves then the natural gas that is still being delivered by Russia to fill up the national gas storages for winter (currently 58% full).

This comes after Russia decided last week to lower the gas supply to 40% - allegedly because the pipeline needs repairs and one important pump is missing, because it was being maintained in Canada and CDN refused to have it shipped back to Russia.

The gas storage owner has been Gazprom Germany (see other thread in the forum) and after last winter, they conveniently "forgot" to start filling up the storage again. :-)

a reply to: TDDAgain

Mining coal and using it in your own country is one thing but that graph says nothing about where the coal is going.

My question is, how do you know that the coal was being used in Germany?

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes
a reply to: TDDAgain

Mining coal and using it in your own country is one thing but that graph says nothing about where the coal is going.

My question is, how do you know that the coal was being used in Germany?

Probably from the fact that Germany exports about 0.0% of the self-mined coal? :-)

Germany is a coal importing nation, the shutdown of the coal mines happened, starting in the 60s, due to coal being less expensive when imported at world-market-price than being self-mined. Countries from where the coal is coming are Russia (30%) and USA, Australia, South Africa, and, to a lesser degree Columbia.

Almost all coal being used in Germany is Lignite (Braunkohle), of which Germany has still significant amounts left (Northrhein-Westphalia, Eastern Germany states). The mining of Bituminous Coal (Steinkohle) stopped in the 70s-80s, it came mainly from mines in the Ruhr region and the Saarland and became more and more expensive due to very deep mining, while Lignite can basically be picked up from the surface.

a reply to: Wide-Eyes
Basically carport answered your question to the fullest.

And besides that, the graph is energy production, not coal mines or lignite on the surface. It says MW, not TONNS. At least try to understand the graph.

a reply to: TDDAgain

I still don't understand what sort of difference it makes. Coal is being mined and will be used for the very same purpose.

a reply to: everyone
Yes, that's the point of this thread. Because the other one portrayed it like "lol Germany now doing coal again", when it's the most used energy source anyways for electricity generation.

We don't heat with brown coal or lignite. Natural gas is used for heating but very little for electricity. Therefore it is just logic that in the current situation, like carport eloquently explained, we try to

- make contingencies for less gas usage for heating
- make contingencies to be able to use electricity for heating to feather the gas usage impact.
- meanwhile use what we save to refill our gas tanks, just to be sure.

Also
- natural gas is used in tiny amounts for electricity, compared to solar, coal, water, wind and biomass.

The point is
- it's a necessary move
- we're not restarting our coal plants as in, we dropped it and now stupidly go back to it, we are restarting coal plants that have been offline additional to the ones that have been running all the time.

That other thread portrayed it in a completely different light and it got dynamic. A false picture was established, not saying intentional but lacking knowledge.

Therefor I provided the knowledge, that's the purpose of this thread. Arguing about the amount of coal we use or where it comes from is moot. It was a distraction from the real purpose and argument of this thread, that I again layed out and can be read in the OP.