BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - German Economics Minister Robert Habeck has defended the decision to temporarily bring coal-fired power plants back from reserve to the market. This was necessary to reduce gas consumption in the electricity sector, the Green politician said Monday at the "Handelsblatt" energy summit in Berlin. Of course, this was "a sin in terms of climate policy, and of course we should work to keep this sin as short as possible."

For these power plants to go back into reserve in the spring of 2024, he said, there needs to be a secure basis for gas-fired power plants to go through. This will be ensured by the new LNG infrastructure, he said. The next step, he said, will also be to reduce lignite-fired generation.

"Once we have the infrastructure in place, (...) we can send back all the coal-fired power plants that we have brought online, which is my plan." He said he definitely doesn't want to say in a year's time that coal-fired power plant lifetimes will have to be extended another year or two. "Then we might have gotten a handle on the energy crisis as a result of the Russian attack, but we will have completely failed in terms of energy policy with regard to the structural crisis, the reduction of CO2 emissions. That must not happen."

He reiterated the goal of about 80 percent of electricity production coming from renewable energy sources in 2030. "We will have reached just under 50 this year," Habeck said. The addition of new capacity is going up significantly, he said. "The 80 is achievable, but it's a similar output to building three LNG terminals in ten months."/tob/DP/mis