Siemens plans hydrogen innovation campus in coal region - media

Siemens plans to build an “innovation campus” for hydrogen technologies at the company’s site in Görlitz, reports Reuters citing sources close to the company. The campus could help strengthen the eastern German mining region of Saxony, which is still very dependent on coal as a source of income and jobs, and will be heavily affected by the country’s planned exit from coal-fired power generation. The innovation campus is part of a "Siemens Görlitz Pact for the Future," writes Reuters, which the company has said will be signed next week by CEO Joe Kaeser, the Prime Minister of Saxony Michael Kretschmer (CDU) and a representative of the research organisation Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. In 2018, Siemens announced that the company would shut down its turbine plant in Görlitz, endangering more than 700 local jobs. Following protests from workers and politicians, the company, however, changed course, deciding to keep the plant and promising the “pact for the future,” which is now about to be signed. Due to restructuring, some of the plant’s employees are still slated to lose their jobs.
German industry giant Siemens epitomises the upheavals that the country’s energy transition has caused like no other. Meanwhile, the German government wants to invest heavily in the lignite mining states like Saxony as part of plans to exit coal-fired power generation and coal mining by 2038.