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Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - The Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) in North Rhine-Westphalia has criticized the state's leading decision on lignite mining in the Rhenish district.
"Despite the galloping climate change and the lack of a need for energy policy, more villages are being abandoned to destruction," said the environmental organization in Düsseldorf on Tuesday.
The key decision is to implement the path to phasing out lignite-based power generation by 2038.
According to the plan, several villages are also to give way to the Garzweiler opencast mine.
This is to be decided in 2026.
The initiative “Human rights before mining rights”, which represents the inhabitants of the affected villages, described the key decision as “legally insignificant”.
The initiative confirmed that the decision did not change anything about their will to take legal action with the energy company RWE.
Whether open-cast mining is legally permissible even with the use of the villages cannot be decided in a binding manner through a lead decision, but only in the legally prescribed procedures - starting with an expropriation procedure.
The initiative has a plot of land in front of Keyenberg in Erkelenz.
Compared to the draft of the key decision from October 2020, there was even a deterioration, complained the BUND.
The state government is forcing the final destruction of still inhabited places such as Lützerath.
Keyenberg and five other villages were demolished with the date 2026.
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Coal opponents protested in Düsseldorf's government district on Tuesday.
They unloaded a pile of rubble, a symbol of villages that are being abandoned for the mining of lignite.
The “All Villages Remain” initiative criticized the coal policy under Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) as “unrealistic and hostile to science”.
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