Eviction is imminent: Lützerath and the fight for coal

The village of Lützerath at the Garzweiler open-cast lignite mine will soon be cleared. Climate activists are on the barricades, today the police informed about the upcoming operation. What is the conflict about – and what role do the Greens play?

the initial situation

The village of Lützerath belongs to the 43,000-inhabitant town of Erkelenz in western North Rhine-Westphalia. It consists of only a few houses. The original residents have sold their property and have long since moved elsewhere. The resettlement began in 2006. The place belongs to the energy company RWE. Clearing and demolition work started in 2020. The group wants to clear the area at the Garzweiler opencast lignite mine in order to excavate the coal underneath. Climate activists have occupied the site for about two years and want to prevent the eviction. Lützerath is now right on the edge of the huge hole that the opencast mine is digging in the landscape.

The conflict is now symbolically charged and is partly emotional. It is also politically explosive because, of all people, Green Ministers at federal and state level negotiated the agreement with RWE. Eviction is now imminent.

What have politicians and RWE agreed?

RWE mines lignite in the Rhenish mining area west of Cologne. Yet. Because the exit from coal is a done deal. A phase-out by 2038 was actually agreed. In October last year, the Essen-based energy company agreed with the Greens-led economics ministries in the federal government and in North Rhine-Westphalia to end lignite-fired power generation by 2030. The agreement also provides for the electricity generation to halve the amount of lignite available in the Garzweiler II opencast mine to around 280 million tons. Five villages in the Rhenish area that have been threatened by resettlement are to be retained – they are Keyenberg, Kuckum, Oberwestrich, Unterwestrich and Berverath. The embattled town of Lützerath, however, is to give way to the coal excavators.

And the term of the two Neurath D and E power plant blocks, which were actually supposed to be shut down at the end of the year, will be extended until the end of March 2024 due to the energy crisis. “It wasn’t my personal plan and it wasn’t the coalition plan to bring coal-fired power plants back online,” said Economics and Climate Minister Robert Habeck. But there is a war in Ukraine and half of Germany’s gas imports are missing.

Why can’t Lützerath be preserved?

RWE and the NRW state government argue that the coal lying here is absolutely necessary to ensure the energy supply. According to the green-led Ministry of Economic Affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia, the coal is also needed to operate the lignite industry at high capacity during the energy crisis. Because of the energy crisis, there is an “increased demand for lignite, which is needed to maintain security of supply,” it says officially.

Activists like Luisa Neubauer deny that: “The coal under Lützerath is not needed for energy security in the crisis,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is shown by independent reports.” The different figures from RWE are “demonstrably wrong”. Expert reports from the CoalExit Research Group and the German Institute for Economic Research recently came to the conclusion that energy supply during the crisis would also be possible without the coal under Lützerath.

What do the activists want?

Preserve the village and prevent demolition. They are calling for a moratorium on evictions. They warn of damage to the environment and animals and see compliance with the 1.5 degree target of the Paris climate protection agreement at risk. Environmental activists accused the Greens of “sacrificing” the town of Lützerath for the agreement with RWE on a coal phase-out in 2030. That is why there have recently been repeated protests against the advance of opencast mining. The environmentalists joined forces to form the “Lützerath unräumbar” action alliance, which also includes Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and the Last Generation. According to their own statements, they want to fight “for global climate justice” in Lützerath.

The closer the eviction gets, the more attention and flow the activists get. Several thousand people came to the village over the weekend. The Potsdam climate researcher Stefan Rahmsdorf spoke out against the eviction. “Politicians should think carefully about how a massive police operation for coal and against climate protectors will be judged in four or five years’ time, when the climate damage has become even more massive and obvious,” wrote the head of Earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research at Twitter.

What is the current situation in Lützerath?

The atmosphere is tense. For several days, the police have been preparing to evacuate the village. Activists erected barricades, emergency services were – according to the police – pelted with stones and firecrackers. The police are “quite worried about the coming days and weeks. It will be a challenging operation with many risks,” said Aachen Police President Dirk Weinspach WDR.

In a letter to the activists, he recently wrote: “I wish the evacuation of Lützerath could have been avoided.” He also shares the concern of further global warming and of what will happen if the 1.5 degree target agreed under international law is not met. But the police only explain – the decisions are made by others. Weinspach hopes that a mission like the one in the Hambach Forest will not be repeated.

What happened in the Hambach Forest in 2018?

First “Hambi”, now “Lützi”? At least the pictures are similar. In 2018, masked activists and police officers with hard hats feuded in the Hambach Forest for weeks. The forest south of the Garzweiler mining districts was actually intended to be cleared to give the RWE energy company the opportunity to mine the lignite underneath. The imminent destruction of the ancient forest with 30 meter high trees mobilized massive resistance. It cost the police many weeks and millions of euros to dismantle 86 tree houses and liquidate the warehouses underneath. A young journalist died when he fell through the planks of a suspension bridge between two tree houses. When the eviction was almost complete, the clearing was temporarily prohibited by court order. The forest is still there today.

What’s next in Lützerath?

The authorities announced an eviction from January 11th. The legal basis for the eviction is an order from next Tuesday, as announced by the responsible Heinsberg district administration. Lützerath thus became a restricted area. According to the decree, “from January 10, 2023, administrative enforcement measures will be taken through the exercise of direct force” – i.e. an eviction by the police.

An urgent application by climate protection against the injunction failed before the Aachen administrative court. The Higher Administrative Court for North Rhine-Westphalia also rejected an urgent application against the ban on residence and entry. On Tuesday evening there should be public information for citizens in Erkelenz as an offer for talks.

Climate activists have announced a large-scale demonstration in Lützerath for Saturday next week, which they say will be attended by “several thousand” protesters. The demonstration should therefore take place despite the ban on residence and a possibly previously enforced evacuation by the police.

For the police, the operation has many unknowns. As in the nearby Hambach Forest, activists have built tree houses and barricaded seven houses. According to the police, a small part of the protest scene is violent. About 300 activists are in Lützerath, another 250 in a neighboring town, the police said. Prepare yourself for peaceful demonstrations as well as violent protests, said Wilhelm Sauer, chief of operations chief, with a view to the next few days.

The police plan to operate for a total of four weeks. According to Sauer, the forces come from all over Germany. The Aachen police are in charge of the evacuation. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) said in Morning magazine from ARD and ZDF, he doesn’t hope that afterwards the debate will arise again as to whether the police had to do it. There is “no other choice”.

The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, warned in the “taz” against the infiltration of the protests by violent left-wing extremists.

The Greens also warned of a tough confrontation. “I think de-escalation of everyone involved is now the order of the day,” said co-chairman Ricarda Lang. And co-boss Omid Nouripour added together Morning magazine from ARD and ZDF: The dispute was “judged by all instances” and the energy company RWE had a legal right to the excavation of the coal lying beneath Lützerath.