With hundreds of protesters currently trying to halt the continued development of a coal mine in Germany - which would involve the destruction of the now abandoned village of Lützerath, the further pursuit of fossil fuels in a country ostensibly seeking to phase them out is under the spotlight. The main justification used by the German government is that the country's hand has been forced by the massive gap left by Russian oil and gas. At least in the short to medium term, coal has been selected is one answer to Germany's significant problem.
Longer term, it's renewables that are planned to dominate Germany's electricity mix, and this is something reflected by an International Energy Agency forecast. As this infographic shows, global use of coal for electricity generation outweighed that of renewables by 8 percentage points. By 2027, this is predicted to flip, with renewables accounting for 38 percent of global electricity production compared to 30 percent from coal.
The IEA report, released since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, says that the war has led countries "to increasingly value the energy security benefits of renewable energy." Although some of the shorter term solutions may be focused by necessity on fossil or nuclear sources, the future is looking more green. An additional factor in this ongoing shift quoted in the report were the "high fossil fuel and electricity prices resulting from the global energy crisis" that have "made renewable power technologies much more economically attractive".
