Germany’s War on Coal Is Over. Coal Lost.Its last mine is about to close.
AMELIA URRYDEC. 3, 2017 6:00 AM
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/germanys-war-on-coal-is-over-coal-lost/
An old mine car sits as an exhibit in the former Zollverein Mine ComplexAmelia Urry/GristThis story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s a sunny October day on the outskirts of the west German town of Bottrop. A quiet, two-lane road leads me through farm pasture to a cluster of anonymous, low-lying buildings set among the trees. The highway hums in the distance. Looming above everything else is a green A-frame structure with four great pulley wheels to carry men and equipment into a mine shaft. It’s the only visible sign that, almost three quarters of a mile below, Germany’s last hard coal lies beneath this spot.
Bottrop sits in the Ruhr Valley, a dense stretch of towns and suburbs home to 5.5 million people. Some 500,000 miners once worked in the region’s nearly 200 mines, producing as much as 124 million tons of coal every year.
Next year, that era will come to an end when this mine closes. The Ruhr Valley is in the midst of a remarkable transformation. Coal and steel plants have fallen quiet, one by one, over the course of the last half-century. Wind turbines have sprung up among old shaft towers and coking plants as Germany strives to hit its renewable energy goals.
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