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Germany’s second-biggest coal miner plans to invest €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) in renewable energy at one of its lignite operations as the government increases pressure to phase out the dirtiest fossil fuel.
LEAG will develop 7 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2030 at the Boxberg opencast mine, with the first gigawatt of generating capacity commissioned in four years time, Rainer Schiller, the company’s head of large-scale energy storage, said in an interview. That will be built alongside 3 gigawatt-hours of energy storage and 2 gigawatts of hydrogen production.
Despite the renewable energy drive, LEAG is still pushing back against Berlin’s accelerated timetable for exiting coal. Germany has a legal deadline to phase out the dirty fuel by 2038, but the ruling coalition is pushing for an earlier target of 2030 to reach ambitious climate goals.
To weather the energy crisis unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the country temporarily brought back some coal plants that were offline. The government is in talks with LEAG, after negotiating an early coal exit agreement with utility RWE AG in October.
LEAG plans to develop as much as 14 gigawatts of renewable generation at Boxberg by 2040, Schiller said.
The company has signed a €200 million agreement with US-based energy storage producer ESS Tech Inc. to build an iron flow battery system at the site. LEAG is also looking into floating solar panels as some coal mines it operates are flooded with water when they come to the end of their lives.
(By Cagan Koc)
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