Conditions that allowed license to expand Hambach coal mine have changed – opinion

German energy company RWE may be legally entitled to proceed with the expansion of its lignite mine near the Hambach Forest and to have police remove protesters, but the conditions that led to RWE’s license for expansion “have changed dramatically,” Michael Bauchmüller writes in an opinion piece in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “When the hole in Hambach was licensed, there was no Paris Climate Agreement, no promise by industrialised states to reach peak emissions ‘as soon as possible’. And there was no Energiewende in sight, quite the contrary. Wind and solar power were seen as a nice utopia that would never deliver relevant amounts of electricity.”

Read the opinion piece in German here.

See CLEW's Coal exit commission watch and the factsheet Germany’s three lignite mining regions for background.