Large demo in Lützerath – climate activist Neubauer probably wants to take part

Dusseldorf A few days before a planned evacuation of the village of Lützerath in North Rhine-Westphalia, a violent conflict loomed. The energy company RWE wants to demolish Lützerath in order to expand its brown coal opencast mine Garzweiler to the area of ​​the village and to extract more coal. Climate activists criticize this and want to put up massive resistance. To this end, they have announced a “village walk”, to which Germany’s best-known climate activist Luisa Neubauer is also expected.

A spokeswoman for the “Initiative Lützerath” said on Sunday: “We hope that we can hold Lützerath for six weeks.” There are currently 700 people in the hamlet consisting of a few houses, which belongs to the city of Erkelenz.

Among other things, sit-ins and the occupation of tree houses and huts are planned. Climate activist Neubauer told the German Press Agency: “In Lützerath the limit of carrying on like this has been reached. Politicians do not yet dare to recognize this, but civil society does.”

The police are preparing for a possible large-scale operation in the course of the upcoming evacuation of Lützerath. The federal police and almost all federal states are sending emergency services to the Rhenish town. This was reported on Sunday by the “Spiegel” with reference to internal reports from the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior and the police headquarters in Aachen. Despite the Germany-wide support, one of the reports said that “the forces offered” have not yet “completely” covered the need.

RWE boss Markus Krebber finally decided last October together with the Green Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck and the Green NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur that Lützerath should give way to the lignite excavators.

Activists travel to the big demonstration on Saturday with shuttle buses

Part of the agreement reached in October is that RWE should continue to run two coal-fired power plant units until March 2024, which were actually supposed to go offline at the end of 2022. This is intended to reduce the consumption of gas for gas-fired power plants and alleviate gas shortages caused by the lack of Russian pipeline gas. In return, RWE has agreed to completely phase out coal-fired power generation by 2030 instead of 2038.

The plan to demolish Lützerath is not new, however. The village is located directly on the edge of the Garzweiler opencast mine. The resettlement of the residents began in 2000, and now only climate activists live in the hamlet.

According to the will of the authorities, however, they will soon have to give way. The district of Heinsberg, to which Lützerath belongs, issued a general decree on December 20, 2022, which prohibits entering the town and its access roads. From January 10, i.e. from Tuesday, people who violate the rules must therefore expect “the taking of administrative enforcement measures through the exercise of direct coercion”.

An urgent application by climate activists against the residence ban was rejected last Thursday by the administrative court in Aachen, and the ban was classified as “probably lawful”. The activists have complained to the Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia. However, that does not want to be decided before Monday and announced that the complaint has no suspensive effect on the ban on residence.

Some climate protectors are nevertheless determined to prevent the eviction. At the weekend, activists concreted gas bottles into the lanes in front of Lützerath to make them impassable.

>> Read here: Anti-coal protests in Lützerath – is there no alternative to opencast lignite mining? Hear more here in the podcast Handelsblatt Today

Protests are also planned from several quarters. Next Saturday, January 14th, there will be a large demonstration in Lützerath. Climate activists expect thousands of participants to travel to the event. As early as Saturday, shuttle buses brought numerous people from nearby train stations to Lützerath and to a camp in a field in the neighboring Keyenberg district.

RWE says the evacuation of Lützerath is necessary to ensure the energy supply. The company and the federal and state governments of North Rhine-Westphalia argue that the phase-out of coal by 2030 will leave large amounts of lignite in the ground. The Garzweiler opencast mine has a license to mine 560 million tons of coal. Due to the earlier phase-out of coal, half of it will probably remain in the ground.

Environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, on the other hand, see the expansion of Garzweiler as a threat to German climate goals.

With agency material.

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