Thousands join pro-coal demonstration in Germany

More than 15,000 workers from the wider coal industry in Germany protested against a hasty exit country from the power-generating technology on Wednesday.

The demonstration was held in Bergheim, North Rhine-Westphalia, only a short-distance from an ongoing meeting of official coal commission established by the federal government in Berlin. The so-called "Growth, Structural change and Employment Commission" is scheduled to provide concrete proposals on how to phase out coal power generation in the country in a socially-responsible manner by the end of the year.

Protestors were seen carrying banners with captions such as "Hambi must go" in reference to an ongoing public controversy in Germany over the future of the nearby Hambach forests. Environmental activists who want to prevent a remaining 200 hectares owned by the energy company RWE from being felled in the course of coal mining activities have chosen "Hambi stays" as one of their rallying calls.

Having recently drawn as many as 50,000 anti-RWE protestors to the area, the issue still remains unresolved and has become symbolic of the uncertain prospects of the once powerful German coal industry. For the time being, the Essen-based energy provider has been ordered to temporarily halt all clearance and felling operations until the environmental implications are assessed more thoroughly in spite of having previously already obtained regulatory approval to do so.

Speaking on Wednesday, however, Armin Laschet governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, warned that it would be wrong to reduce the work of the coal commission to the dispute over Hambach. "The question of the global climate and the German contribution is bigger than the question of the Hambach forest," Laschet said.

At the same time, the governor urged the Coal Commission to ensure the competitiveness of Germany as an industrial manufacturing location in its final recommendations. He emphasized that more than 250,000 individuals worked in energy-intensive industries in North Rhine-Westphalia alone and that reliable electricity supply was hence of enormous regional importance.

The Coal Commission is expected to release a first preliminary report addressing challenges of structural change and employment in former coal-mining areas in the course of October. According to a draft first cited by the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), the experts will propose introducing an "areal bonus" with regards to future expansion of German traffic- and telecommunication infrastructure.