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Read, Debate: Engage.
| topic: | Energy |
|---|---|
| located: | Germany, United Kingdom |
| editor: | Gurmeet Singh |
Germany is in many ways one of the most progressive countries in the world. It often leads debates in Europe on human rights, migrant rights, and recently, started to catch up with other progressive nations on sexual rights. When it comes to coal however, the central-European nation is still stuck in the 20th Century.
It lags behind the U.K. when it comes to weaning itself off coal. Only five coal power stations remain in operation in Britain, with two scheduled to close by next summer. The Financial Times reports that "in 1971, conventional coal and oil power plants accounted for 88 percent of the electricity supplied to the U.K. market. Last year, coal’s share had shrunk to just 5 percent. And between April and June this year it fell to an all-time low of just 0.6 percent.”
Britain has managed to reduce its use of coal so drastically, through government intervention. In 2015, the U.K. government announced that the industry would be wound down by 2025. That target looks likely to be met. Of course, the job losses and the impact on local communities will be enormous, and without further governmental support, whether through welfare or through work re-allocation, these once thriving communities will become desolate. Of course, this encapsulates the entire political problem: how to shift to a greener economy while limiting job losses? So far, the U.K. has shown that a cold, hard approach is probably best for the sake of reducing carbon emissions but will other countries be willing to do the same.
Germany, for all its progressive credentials, doesn’t seem to be one of them. It has announced a plan to phase out coal by 2038 - more than 10 years after the U.K. - but this hardly seems like the hurried action required to confront climate change. Where the U.K. will only have 3 coal power plants in operation after next summer, Germany will still have 15 by 2022, after it shuts down 12.
There is a lot more political sensitivity regarding the issue in Germany. Bloomberg reports that “Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration has earmarked just 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to pay for closing a total of 5 gigawatts of coal capacity by 2023, according to a government official”. These plans came as a surprise to many across the country, showing the ‘cloak-and-dagger’ politics it takes to get real action on renewable energy, as well as the enormous subsidies coal power already receives from the government.
In Germany, so far, it has been up to concerned citizens to lead the way, as reported by the Guardian, “A group of villagers living on the edge of one of Germany’s biggest surface coal mines have vowed not to sell their properties to the energy company RWE, and to mount a legal challenge against any attempt to oust them from their homes. The protest alliance is the first coordinated effort in more than 10 years against the expansion of the Garzweiler mine in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which threatens the existence of 12 villages that are home to 7,600 residents. Demolition of the first four villages is scheduled to begin in 2023.
Acting under the name Menschenrecht vor Bergrecht – Human Rights Before Mining Rights – the alliance of villagers announced at a press conference in Düsseldorf on Monday they would refuse an expropriation agreement with RWE under which the energy company would pay to resettle them.”
While citizens continue to demand greater action from the government, it seems that the government will still linger behind many other states when it comes to taking action on climate change.
