Energy turnaround complete
Last big coal-fired power station shut down

The last big power station in Germany, a 750 megawatt plant at Grevenbroich in the Rhineland brown-coal region, has been shut down. The plant had remained to the last in the hands of the former Rhineland-Westphalia electricity giant, RWE. The shutdown also means the biggest single source of carbon dioxide has run dry. At the same time the hundredth German 50 megawatt-plus solar power station was started up on the same site in the presence of the USE Energy Minister.

In his address the chairperson of the USE Government Council, Bettino Calderone, praised Germany's service in pioneering the radical change in the way energy is supplied in the world. "Germany has shown that turning away from the large-scale production of energy is viable, sound economic policy," he said.

- Joschka Fischer, EU Energy Minister

The shutdown of the Grevenbroich power station also saw the completion of the RWE's own reorganisation. One of what used to be the biggest electricity suppliers has become one of the biggest manufacturers of photovoltaic facilities. It has managed in its labora- tories to improve the efficiency of solar cells almost to the physical limit. Another company priority is its energy consultancy, in which it works for local authorities and industrial companies to devise and install the most economical systems for obtaining energy.

The energy "turnaround" began in Germany in 1995. Feeling the impact made by the first indications of the greenhouse effect, the Government launched an extensive programme of energy saving and at last passed the ecological tax reform which had long been a matter of controversy. At the heart of the new policy was an energy tax on non-renewable sources of energy. This created perceptible incentives for industry to avoid squandering energy and switch to environmentally sounder technologies. Household consumption of electricity was then also able to be reduced by about half. Federal and state Governments called for the construction of smaller, decentralised, combined heat-and-power plants 90 per cent efficient in their use of fuel. Not even at optimal operation can large-scale power stations achieve this efficiency. They transform only 40 per cent of the energy they use into electricity.

Parallel to this, in a step which had long been called for by environmental organisations, billions of marks were made available for research on renewable energies. This then made possible the gradual shutdown of nuclear and fossil-fuel power stations.

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