Warsaw's Administrative Court has suspended proceedings on Turów coal mine's sham environmental impact assessment (EIA) that its owner PGE requires for its licence renewal. The verdict leaves local communities, already battered by water shortages, subsidence and dust, to stare down the barrel of a further twenty years of mining, while they await the claimants’ appeal.
As devastating wildfires continue to ravage Europe as a consequence of the climate emergency, German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling operational wind turbines near its sprawling Garzweiler open pit coal mine in North Rhine Westphalia with the intention of excavating a further 15 to 20 million tonnes of coal.
Poland’s General Director for Environmental Protection waved through an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the country’s Turów coal mine this past Friday, despite expert analysis showing the EIA severely underestimates the amount of groundwater the mine is draining.
German utility RWE has conceded that it will exit coal by 2030, eight years earlier than previously planned, further confirming Germany’s 2030 coal exit. However, the agreement struck with the federal, and state government for North Rhine-Westphalia will still see RWE destroy the village of Lützerath and commit it to fossil gas investments.
Operator Eins Energie für Sachsen has decided to bring forward the closure, Germany’s Chemnitz-Nord plant will shut six years earlier.
It has been five years since the UN Paris Climate Agreement, and in that short time, half of Europe’s coal plants have closed, or have announced pre-2030 closure plans. 2030 is now the key date for coal in Europe and the OECD, as it’s the latest possible moment these countries can close their coal plants and still meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Local groups and NGOs today welcomed the Czech government’s decision to file a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice against the Polish government for the illegal operation of the Turów lignite coal mine, which has been dug right up to the Czech and German borders, damaging local water supplies for nearby communities.
The future of Germany’s controversial Datteln IV coal plant hangs in the balance after court ruled that the plant was constructed illegally.
We're running out of time to address climate change, and while the EU is doing more and more to act on it and clean up industry, one of its key laws to cut industrial pollution does not cover carbon emissions! This has to change, and we have an opportunity to do it right now!