alt Hacker NewsOn the one hand, it's nice that they're doing it.
One might think that they've come to the conclusion that it's time to phase out coal and move towards renewables. But coal is still big in Germany, and with the current Minister for Economic Affairs, Katarina Reiche [1], the fossil fuel lobby has installed a puppet in that position, one who is going all in on fossils again and pushing legislation that makes it much harder to expand solar and wind capacity. Even though no one needs coal anymore, big companies like RWE still forcibly demolish villages to expand their mines and show off their power .
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherina_Reiche [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine
Wind and solar power do not provide dispatchable power and they therefore do not replace conventional power plants.
Germany isn't keeping their coal-fired power plants and they're not building new gas-fired power plants despite the energy transition but because of it.
You're spreading conspiracy theories when you claim Katherina Reiche is a fossil fuel puppet. She is doing what has always been the plan for the energy transition: Building gas-fired power plants.
That plan is even in the DENA study for the energy transition:
https://www.dena.de/fileadmin/dena/Dokumente/Pdf/9262_dena-L... (p. 29)
And before you claim DENA is some sort of fossil fuel lobby organization, they're not. DENA belongs to the German state and was founded in 2000 by SPD and Greens:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Energie-Agentur