Germany's Altmaier hopeful about proposal to shut coal-fired plants

A compromise hammered out early Saturday by a government-appointed commission would provide a secure energy supply while allowing Germany to meet its climate change target for 2030, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told a German newspaper.

Altmaier told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung the German government would "carefully and constructively" examine the proposals, which call for Germany to shut down all coal-fired power plants in Germany by 2038 at the latest. He called Germany's plans to exit coal production "one of the most challenging transformational processes in the last decades".