German appetite for coal amidst shift to clean energy

Germany is fast embracing renewable energy, but is still sourcing brown coal

A grove of apple saplings grows on the lee side of Ulrich Schulz’s barn. He did not plant them for the fruit, he said, but as an act of rebellion against a nearby mining company that wants to raze his farm, which his family has owned since 1560, to get at the coal beneath his land.

“A nod to Martin Luther,” said Schulz, 53, gesturing at the two rows of spindly trees. He said that if he knew the world was coming to an end, he would plant an apple tree.It may not be the end of the world, but it could be the end of Atterwasch with a population of 241. While Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised her country a future virtually free of fossil fuels, it may seem strange that this village in eastern Germany, and two neighbouring ones, are still fighting plans to wipe them, quite literally, off the map.

But Germany’s sudden hunger for coal has emerged as the dirty side of Merkel’s ambitions to shut down the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022 and eventually move Germans mostly to renewable energy. In fact, last year Germany burned more brown coal than at any time since its Communist-era factories began closing in 1990, according to AG Energiebilanzen, an association that tracks energy consumption.

The problem is that there are days when the wind does not blow and clouds fill the sky. With eight nuclear reactors shut since 2011 and the push for renewable energy still in its infancy, the country needs to bridge the power gaps. That has only increased Germans’ craving for coal, even though their energy diet is supposed to be shifting.

For Schulz and his neighbours, the battle to save Atterwasch is akin to not wanting to be the final casualty of a lost war, in a region where about 25,000 people have already been uprooted by mines over the years. “Nobody wants to be the last one,” Schulz said, contemplating the bright green of a young crop of rye on a balmy winter day.

Eckhard Schulz, Ulrich’s brother, said he was struck by that fact recently, while touring the nearby open-pit mine at Jänschwalde with his future son-in-law, a landscaper employed for reclamation projects by Vattenfall, the Swedish company that runs the mine.

They encountered a small sign on the spot where a church in the village of Horno had stood for centuries. Until 2003. That was when Horno became the most recent of 136 villages swallowed by open-pit mines in the region of Lusatia since 1924, according to the Archive of Lost Places, a local documentation center about the relocated villages.“I stopped and I realised in the future, that could be our church,” said Eckhard Schulz, who helps care for the three bells in the tower of Atterwasch’s medieval church. The oldest bell, he notes, was cast in 1460, before Columbus reached America. “Suddenly, I wanted to turn back. I didn’t want to see anything more.”

For Vattenfall, the coal miner, Germany’s shift to green energy has, paradoxically, been an unexpected boon. “We have certainly felt the impact of the energy transformation in the last three years,” said Thoralf Schirmer, a spokesman for Vattenfall, which owns five open-pit mines in eastern Germany that extract lignite, or brown coal. The company is petitioning the government to expand three of those mines.

Prospect of relocation

“We have seen an increase of the demand for lignite since Germany decided to scale down its nuclear energy, because you need another source of energy to fill in this gap, and this source is lignite,” Schirmer said. “It is cheap, abundant and easy to get at.”

Easy enough, but not if the people of Atterwasch have a say. Vattenfall says it takes relocation very seriously and has sought to begin speaking with the residents about the process. “A house for a house, a school for a school, a church for a church,” Schirmer said. “Neighbors should be kept together; the structure of the new village should resemble the old.”

But the villagers are not interested, said Christian Huschga, 43, a scriptwriter who moved to Atterwasch as a child and is now raising two sons here. “We aren’t interested in talking, because the minute we open the dialogue, it makes it look like we are interested in relocating, and we aren’t.”

“We want to stay here because we don’t think that it will be necessary, that we will need to dig brown coal from the earth in 20 to 40 years, when we already want to have stopped using fossil fuels. We find that schizophrenic.” The prospect of relocating is an emotional one. A banner declaring “Atterwasch stays!” hangs over the firehouse, and a bright yellow X, a local symbol of resistance, decorates the village church, a rallying point for candlelight vigils and marches.

For now, the survival of the village has become a question of endurance, of what will last longer, the determination of residents like the Schulzes to stay or Germans’ appetite for coal.

Germany has poured billions into expanding green energy, and the government predicts that the transition could cost up to 550 billion euros ($757 billion) before it is over. So far renewable energy sources have expanded to 23 per cent of the country’s supply. But the goal — 80 per cent renewables by 2050 — is still a long way off.

In addition to providing enough electricity to power millions of households and industry in the region and beyond, the mining industry provides about 10,000 jobs, directly or indirectly, according to local officials. Vattenfall sponsors the local soccer and ice hockey teams, as well as an annual film festival in the main city, Cottbus, and it supports several other cultural and educational institutions.

“Coal is the foundation of prosperity in the region,” said Lothar Nicht, a deputy mayor in Cottbus, the largest city in Lusatia. Before the first mines opened in the late 1800s, he said, the region was one of Germany’s poorest. After the textile industry’s decline at the end of the last century, mine closings could be fatal.

“What is the Plan B? There isn’t one,” Nicht said. “Nobody knows what will happen in the next 20 to 50 years. The question is what will happen to us? We will once again become the poorhouse of the nation.” For now, the Schulz brothers will not even discuss relocating, choosing instead to focus on fighting to preserve their village. “We are still convinced that we will be able to grow old here, to continue to live and work here,” Ulrich Schulz said. “But no one can say that with certainty.”