But there’s still more under his feet to be mined: Six more villages are threatened.
A 56-year-old farmer, Heukamp is the last holdout in Lützerath, the next hamlet slated to be wiped away to allow more digging for coal to power German homes. He is fighting the forced expropriation of the 18th-century farmhouse his family has lived in for generations, which now lies just a few hundred yards from the mine’s edge.
As world leaders prepare to come together in Glasgow, Scotland, next month for the U.N. Climate Change Conference, the tiny community is on the front line in a battle to bring Germany in accord with its climate commitments — one of many such communities around the world, as countries struggle to keep up with ambitious pledges to slash emissions.
The encroaching pit is a reminder of the contradictions of Germany’s environmental record: Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel has been at the forefront of international diplomacy on climate, but Europe’s largest economy has struggled to kick its addiction to coal.
Germany has pledged to stop burning coal by 2038, at least eight years behind 16 other European countries that have committed to ending coal use by the end of this decade or earlier. There is some hope that may change as the three parties that made gains in September’s elections — including Germany’s Greens — hold talks to form a new government. So far they have said they would “ideally” like to see a 2030 coal exit.
“We want to be a front-runner on climate. We sell ourselves as this,” said Pao-Yu Oei, a professor in the economics of sustainable energy transition at the Europe University of Flensburg. “But for some very easy, simple things, we are not willing to take the sacrifice and basically take on our own lobby groups.”
While it burns a fraction of the coal of China or the United States, in the European Union, Germany is the second-largest consumer of hard coal, and the biggest consumer of the less-energy-efficient lignite, or brown coal, which lies under Lützerath.
The idea that any villages need to be sacrificed for the country’s energy needs are outdated by about a decade, said Oei.
Destroying settlements and burning the coal underneath would mean Germany would fall short of its commitments under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, according to a report Oei co-authored that was published by the German Institute for Economic Research and commissioned by organizations fighting to save the villages. The Paris agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels.
“Germany has the technical means and they have the economic means and the financial means to sustain their electricity and energy system without having to destroy more villages,” said Oei.