“Welcome to backwood-land”

The new governing coalition in Germany’s most populous federal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) may not care too much about climate protection despite ambitious promises, Ralf Köpke writes in a commentary for Energie & Management. The conservative-economic liberal (CDU-FDP) government of the state that is responsible for one third of German CO₂-emissions is intent on doing away with the climate protection law initiated by NRW’s previous government, curbing wind power expansion, working towards abolishing the Renewable Energies Act (EEG) on the federal level, and clinging on to powering the region with local hard coal. “A coal exit date is lacking in the coalition agreement, RWE can look forward to continue digging well into the 2040s,” Köpke says. “Welcome to energy policy backwood-land,” he says.

Read the article in German here.

For more information, see the CLEW dossier Vote2017 – German elections and the Energiewende.