“Climate policy is possible with coal” – op-ed

A premature phase-out of the lignite industry doesn’t make “climate policy sense,” it is “humbug,” writes Germany’s former economy and employment minister Wolfgang Clement in an opinion piece in the Handelsblatt. He argues that the legal end date for mining lignite in Germany is already set for the middle of the 2040s, and only the green lobby is pushing for an earlier exit date, which would cost thousands of jobs. Parts of Germany’s most populous state North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) that used to depend on hard coal mining are still suffering from higher than average unemployment, he says.

Read the op-ed in German here.

For background, read the CLEW article Commission watch – Managing Germany’s coal phase-out and the factsheet Germany’s coal exit commission.