Germans rally against the country’s reliance on coal

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | June 24, 2018 | 12:28 pm Energy Europe Coal 
Protest in Germany against reliance on coal. Photo from WWF’s Twitter page.

Residents of five German cities, including Berlin and Hamburg, took it to the streets on Sunday to protest against the country’s reliance on coal for power production.

According to Deutsche Welle, the massive rallies were aimed at pressing the Angela Merkel administration two days before a state commission on coal consumption is to convene for the first time. The commission is tasked with finding a way to eliminate Germany’s dependence on the black mineral.

A report by the Associated Press states that about 22 per cent of Germany’s electricity comes from burning lignite or brown coal, 12 per cent from hard coal and 33 per cent is generated using renewable energy.

Both black and brown coal emit considerable amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burned.

Besides demanding a boost in green energy sources, protesters were also expressing their rejection to a recent announcement by the environment minister, Svenja Schulze, who said the country will likely miss its goal of cutting emissions by 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020.

According to the protests’ organizer, WWF, Germany’s CO2 emissions have not dropped for nine years.

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8 Comments

  • Danny

    Looks to me like these protestors are mostly high school and liberal arts students, who have no clue of real life, or any clues on anything whatsoever, other than recreational drugs. So why a ‘mining focused’ e-magazine would bother to even mention such a demonstration, or whatever WWF opinion may be on anything? Anybody without a real job should not even be allowed to demonstrate on anything.

  • Mike Failla

    Okay then stop all coal fired generation for a day. See how that goes.

  • gil knappmiller

    –and I bet it’s easy to determine the rest of their political views—as I saw about thirty years ago vis-a vis Germany’s “environmental” movement—“the green tree has red roots”–

  • Karin Hall

    Germans should be protesting the invasion of their nation by Soros funded immigrant hoards instead of worrying about the non-issue of coal emissions. You can lead a German to water, but you can’t make them drink.

  • JalakBali

    “Germany’s CO2 emissions have not dropped for nine years.”

    Nine years, what happened 9 years ago? Oh yeah, Fukushima happened 9 years ago and some mong in Germany decided their nuclear plants were at risk of earthquake induced meltdowns ON FREAKING PLATFORM ROCKS. Who wants to bet against WWF being involved in that fiasco. Not me.

  • Chris Pritchard

    This brings me to the old bumper sticker: “Ban Mining, let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark”! Such “evil”, until it is gone.

  • Nordbird

    The Germans banned nuclear power, so what did you expect? Windmills? lol

  • bjoe244

    WWF do not have red roots, they have definitely black roots: “WWF setzt auf fossile Kraftwerke”
    https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/energie-umwelt/umweltschutzorganisation-wwf-setzt-auf-fossile-kraftwerke/7230430.html

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