Change is on the way.
The German energy giant RWE, long one of Europe's biggest CO2 emitters, announced on Tuesday that it wanted to end coal-fired electricity production by 2030 in the Rhine mining basin, bringing forward its plans by eight years. planes.
“We are going to end lignite-fired power generation in 2030, twice as fast as expected,” RWE boss Markus Krebber told a news conference.
This decision comes as the government of Olaf Scholz has been forced to temporarily extend the activity of several coal-fired power stations to deal with the energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The continued operation of several power plants until the spring of 2024 does not call into question the objective that the coalition has set for itself to phase out coal by 2030. In concrete terms, three coal-fired power plants will be shut down by the end of the decade in North Rhine-Westphalia.
This will save 280 million tonnes of CO2, said the Ecologist Minister of the Economy, Robert Habeck, during this press conference.
RWE wants to invest more than 50 billion euros worldwide by 2030 in order to accelerate the energy transition.
Some 15 billion euros of investment are planned for Germany, explained the group.
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