evidence: The first round of auctions for the decommissioning of Germany's hard coal plants has been met with keen interest by the country's coal companies, leading to a clear oversubscription of the auctioned 4 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has awarded bids with a total capacity of 4.78 GW, with the average bid being "significantly below the legal maximum price", BNetzA head Jochen Homann said. Among the installations that will now be taken offline in 2021 are both blocks of the Moorburg heating plant, in Hamburg, which had been opened by operator Vattenfall only in 2015. [...] The decommissioning auctions are among the first steps Germany has taken on its path towards a complete end to coal-fired power production by 2038 at the very latest, as defined in the country's coal exit law. The German parliament had set out a shutdown schedule for individual lignite power plants, compensation payments for operators and auctions for hard coal plant operators to gradually take capacity off the grid over the next years.