**FRANKFURT – Producer prices in Germany rose at a record pace in May, marking the fastest increase since the start of data collection in 1949, the country's statistics office reported Monday.**
**Producer prices for industrial products increased by 33.6 percent compared with May 2021. German producer prices have climbed to a new record every month since December 2021.**
**Price increases continue to be driven by primarily by soaring energy costs, which were up 87.1 percent compared to May 2021.**
With respect to the last sentence above, no wonder the Germans are firing up their old coal-fired power plants.
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With respect to the last sentence above, no wonder the Germans are firing up their old coal-fired power plants.
- Pete
German hard coal is tapped out, what little is left is not economic to mine. They had been importing coal from Russia, Poland and US but now have gone back to burning still plentiful lignite.
The German plan says lignite, also known as brown coal — which is abundant, cheap and dirty — could be phased out by 2035, depending on the progress made in the coming years. Germany shuttered its last hard-coal mine in December, but have continued to burn lignite.
Wind and Solar have not met expectations and coalition politics demands they get rid of the nuclear plants. They really are in a tough situation with few if any good choices remaining. The Russians are playing Natural Gas hardball since Germany started shipping modern 155 MM guns to Ukraine.
I checked out my three favourite lignite mines between Geilenkirchen and Cologne on Google Earth (Inden, Niederzier and the fairly new one at Jüchen) and all of them show signs of fresh strip mining. If you scroll in and look close you can see the monster machines at work.