On Thursday, Bloomberg reported Germany has boosted its consumption of coal amid energy shortages and surging power prices, despite the country being aggressively committed to fighting climate change.

The nation is now burning coal at the fastest rate in six years as it tries to keep the lights on for its citizens, despite long-held ambitions to phase out the fossil fuel. Bloomberg reported that Germany will actually be one of only a handful of countries to actually increase imports of coal next year.

Faced with a choice of cutting its carbon emissions due to fossil fuels, or guaranteeing its citizens they would have electricity over the winter, Germany opted for having electricity, and reopened a raft of shuttered coal-fired electrical plants.

In a recent report the International Energy Agency said most nations are employing, “a limited amount of coal power capacity” and that “only in Germany, with 10 gigawatts, is the reversal at a significant scale.”

Bloomberg, citing Electricity Maps data, noted that at times, as coal consumption surged in Germany, the levels of pollution being produced rivalled those in South Africa and India.

Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) data shows that Germany is now producing a third of its electricity from coal-fired power plants. Compared to the previous year, Germany saw coal power-generation rise 13.3% in the third quarter, according to the data.

Guillaume Perret, founder and director of Perret Associates energy consultancy, said, “Coal is coming back as a baseload generator.” He added, “that the commodity will be less seasonal than it has been “with more coal-burning in summer, spring and autumn, as long as coal remains so much in the money versus gas and there remains a gas shortage.”

Driving the increase in coal usage is the natural gas crisis, but it is also being driven by the situation in France, where continued maintenance on nuclear power plants has meant France cannot generate enough electricity for its citizens. According to Destatus, Germany may become a net exporter of energy to France this year. It would be the first time that happened since 1990.

Perret noted, it would appear likely given present conditions, that Germany will have to suspend the planned closures of its most polluting power plants by at least nine months, keeping them operational until the end of 2024.