Germany divided over future of coal

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On 25 April, 6000 people formed a human chain stretching over seven kilometres in the Rhineland mining area in western Germany to protest against the role of coal in the country.

At the same time, in Berlin, 15,000 people were taking part in a demonstration called by the mining sector union IG BCE.

They were protesting against the proposal of the German Minister for Economic Affairs, Sigmar Gabriel, to introduce an extra tax on the country’s oldest coal power plants.

The objective: to reduce Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Berlin has committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. To achieve this, Germany’s coal power plants need to do their bit, according to the ministry.

Environmental associations agree, and they see the proposal as a first step towards a coal phase-out, following on from the nuclear phase-out to be completed by 2022.

With 27 per cent of its electricity produced from renewable energies, Germany is one of the most advanced European states in terms of green energy.

But this fine achievement masks a less desirable reality for the climate: the country still draws over 40 per cent of its electricity from coal, a highly polluting, greenhouse gas-emitting fuel.

“We are making progress with the energy transition but, at the same time, we are still dependent on coal. It is clearly contradictory,” says Dirk Jansen of the environmental group Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), in an interview with Equal Times.

“And coal that is primarily produced for export. We don’t need it for our own domestic consumption.”

But coal has the advantage of being massively available in Germany’s subsoil. There are three large lignite coal mines still operating in the country.

Some of its opencast mines are expected to remain in operation until 2045. “Lignite is the number one climate killer. No other type of fuel produces CO2 emissions as high as this one. It is outdated technology; it has no place in the 21st century,” insists Jansen.

“There is no greater attack on nature, on our landscapes, our groundwater and our social structures than lignite. Entire villages are destroyed and thousands of people displaced so that it can be extracted.”

In the Rhineland mining area, a dozen or so villages with around 5000 inhabitants are still awaiting demolition to make way for operations to mine the coal laying several hundred metres underground.

The villagers are receiving compensation from RWE, a mining company, in return for leaving their homes and moving to a newly built village a few kilometres away. Around 300 German villages have been destroyed in this way since 1945, according to the figures of Friends of the Earth Germany.

In the context of the climate emergency and the development of renewable energies, such measures are facing increasing popular opposition. There is no longer the consensus over fossil fuels that there was in the post-war era.

 

Coal workers’ fears

The main concern for Germany’s mine and coal plant workers is the government’s plans to limit CO2 emissions.

“There were 18,000 jobs in the region’s mines when I started working here 30 years ago. Now, there are only 5000 people working in the mines and plants,” explains Klaus Emmerich, the workplace representative at the Garzweiler mine, in the Rhineland basin, and an employee of the RWE group.

The former bulldozer operator fears that a tax on the older coal plants will only lead to further job losses.

“People are afraid of losing their jobs,” confirms Manfred Maresch, head of the regional branch of the IG BCE. “The surtax will mean that the older power plants will no longer be profitable. The danger is that the whole lignite mining system will suffer the consequences.”

Ralf Bartels, head of energy transition issues at the IG BCE explains that his union is not against it, but only in the long term: “We support the energy transition. We want to phase out nuclear energy and transition towards renewable energy with coal and gas. So we want to keep using coal for as long as necessary, but no longer.”

The trade unionist’s main grievance is with Germany’s repeated change in energy policy direction over recent years: “Already in 2007, there was a debate around how an industrial country like Germany, which produces so much electricity from coal, would be able to meet its target to reduce greenhouse gases by 40 per cent by 2020. There were plans, at the time, to use the carbon capture and storage technique [allowing CO2 to be stored underground rather than being released into the atmosphere] as a solution.”

“But the government went on to bury the capture and storage idea. Then, in 2010, Angela Merkel decided to extend the operating lives of the nuclear power plants. The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011 subsequently led to a radical change in the equation.

Germany immediately shut down a number of nuclear reactors and passed legislation to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Since then, the country’s greenhouse gas emissions have started to rise again, leading to the current government’s decision to tax the most polluting coal plants.”

“The problem is that coal is part of a system. If the older plants are no longer profitable because of the tax, they will have to close. And without these power plants, the mines will no longer be profitable either,” argues Ralf Bartels. “Because the mines cannot be maintained by the more modern plants alone.”

Not all of Germany’s unions share the same position as the IG BCE.
The service sector union Ver.di, which, for historical reasons, represents coal plant employees, also demonstrated alongside the miners at the end of April.

But this was not the case for IG Metall, the metalworkers’ union, which represents employees from the solar and wind power sectors.

Germany’s most powerful union does, however, agree with its colleagues on one point: Germany’s fuel prices, already the highest in Europe, cannot keep rising.

 

This article has been translated from French.