In the face of criticism from the climate movement to the green Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck was concerned about the clearing of the lignite town of Lützerath. “That also touches me or drives me, like everyone in my party,” said Habeck on Wednesday evening in ZDF’s “heute-journal”. “But still we have to explain what is right. And it was right – unfortunately – to ward off the gas shortage, an energy emergency in Germany, also with additional electricity generation from lignite – and to bring it forward to phase out coal.”
Lützerath is not “the way to go of the energy policy of the past: electricity generation from lignite,” stressed Habeck. “It’s not, as is claimed, the eternal continuation, it’s the bottom line.” Unfortunately, the village of Lützerath could no longer be saved – “but it is the end of lignite-fired power generation in NRW”. “In this respect – with great respect for the climate movement – in my opinion the place is the wrong symbol.”
On Wednesday morning, the police began clearing the town of Lützerath, which was occupied by climate activists, at the Garzweiler opencast mine. The energy company RWE wants to excavate the coal lying under Lützerath. For this, the hamlet in the area of the city of Erkelenz is to be demolished. In return, the economics ministries in the federal and state governments of North Rhine-Westphalia, led by the Greens, had agreed with RWE to phase out coal in the west from 2038 to 2030. In addition, five villages in the vicinity of the Garzweiler opencast mine, which are already largely empty, are to be retained.