Deserted German town becomes a flashpoint over climate change concerns

After 855 years, the western German town of Lützerath went up in flames on Wednesday when climate activists set alight barricades and threw molotov cocktails at police clearing the way for lignite strip-mining.

Emptied of its residents, the deserted town an hour west of Cologne has been inhabited by climate activists over the last two years. A final group arrived this week, bringing to around 600 the number squatting in abandoned homes as part of a final protest against Germany’s ongoing reliance on fossil fuels.

“The people are determined to remain, hang on, and protect the trees and buildings,” said Mara Sauer, spokeswoman for a local protest initiative.

Early on Wednesday, 1,500 police in riot gear erected a 1.5km fence around the town, then moved in to remove protesters.

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Some were hauled down from building roofs; others vowed to spend the night atop purpose-built wooden lookout poles. By lunchtime most protesters had been removed, after brief clashes with police, and the town’s signs removed.

The fate of Lützerath and nearby villages appeared sealed in 2013 when Germany’s constitutional court backed a plan by energy company RWE for an open-cast lignite (brown coal) mine in the region.

In the subsequent years, RWE bought up homes and farms and resettled residents nearby. Under a compromise deal struck last year, the company agreed to depart from coalmining in 2030 – eight years earlier than planned – and spare other villages. But it was allowed top proceed with Lützerath’s demolition to access an estimated 280 million tonnes of coal beneath.

Environmental groups described the decision to proceed with Lützerath’s demolition as a further example of Germany’s split personality

Police said that up to 400 people were still in the town on Wednesday morning, but that some left when ordered to do so. A small number of those remaining were willing to use violence to avoid removal, a spokesman said, though he declined to give any information on injured protesters or police.

German media organisations and journalist unions protested that their staff and members were denied access to the town to document events.

Environmental groups described the decision to proceed with Lützerath’s demolition as a further example of Germany’s split personality, pushing both climate protection and coal-powered energy plants simultaneously.

“The lignite under Lützerath will do nothing to help ease the current energy crisis,” said Dirk Janssen of the Bund environmental group. “The protest shows that this more-of-the-same policy on lignite mining is no longer accepted by younger people.”

After years of dwindling importance, use of coal and lignite as energy sources is rising once more, as Russia’s war on Ukraine ended gas imports from the east.

Germany has sizeable deposits of lignite, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels, and this now contributes nearly a third of the country’s home-produced energy – second only to renewables.

Prominent German actors and musicians issued a protest letter on Wednesday, demanding that Lützerath be the final act in German fossil fuel energy.

“Lützerath can be a moment for the future, for climate-political change and democracy – or it can send a terrible signal that corporate profits are placed above the common good,” they said in their letter.

The end of Lützerath has divided Germany’s ruling Green Party. While many younger Greens said they agreed with the protest, federal energy minister Robert Habeck, a senior party member, said the empty town was “not a symbol of anything”.

By late afternoon, as darkness fell, diggers moved in and began to demolish the buildings. The remaining activists insisted their protest would go on, and said that Swedish climate activist Greta Thurnberg is expected on Friday to visit Lützerath – or whatever is left of it.