20 MAY 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® Germany to Expand Lignite Mine Due to Energy Crisis - Will Exit Coal by 2030 Adapted from Information by RWE Power RWE Power announced it is moving forward with plans to expand operations at the Garzweiler lignite mine in Germany’s Rhein-Kreis Neuss and Heinsberg districts. The expansion includes plans to demolish the former settlement of Lützerath. The former settlement is very close to the current edge of the mine. Mining the area was approved in 1995, and relocation of the nearly 100 residents was completed by April 2017. All necessary licenses and court orders have been granted with their legality confirmed by the courts and all ownership issues have been resolved. Appropriation of the village was part of a political agreement between the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action; the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Action and Energy of The State of North Rhine-Westphalia; and RWE. Additionally, the company announced plans to stop using lignite coal a full eight years earlier than originally planned - by 2030. This means the previously planned operating time of the company’s coal-fired power plants has been cut in half. An amendment to the Coal Phase-out Act concerning RWE’s early exit from coal has been passed by both chambers of the German parliament. The accelerated phase-out will lead to the volume of lignite being extracted from the Garzweiler opencast mine being approximately halved. This means the villages of Keyenberg, Kuckum, Oberwestrich, Unterwestrich, and Berverath, including the three farmsteads of Holzweiler (Eggeratherhof, Roitzerhof, and Weyerhof), will remain in place - and no one will need to be relocated from those villages. The coal under the former settlement of Lützerath is needed to produce electricity during the current energy crisis. At the same time, sufficient volumes of material will be needed for reclamation of the former mines. A large part of the former settlement of Lützerath has already been demolished. Safety measures have been put in place in and around Lützerath, including a nearly one-mile perimeter fence marking out the company-owned construction site where the remaining buildings, ancillary systems, streets, and sewers of the former settlement will be demolished. Then, Garzweiler opencast mining operations can start mining the lignite for electricity generation and excavate sufficient earth and loess (a fine brown soil) for designing attractive landscapes and recultivating areas previously used for opencast mining. This way, electricity generation will be able to shift from natural gas, which has become a scarce commodity since Russia started to wage war against Ukraine, to lignite coal. Lignite has been mined from Germany’s Garzweiler mine for over 100 years. MIN
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