Revier

Europe’s largest brown coal area lies between Cologne, Aachen and Düsseldorf in the west of Germany. Here the second-largest German power company operates three huge brown coal open-cast mines and four large power plants, which have been transforming the landscape and the social structure in this region for decades.

Since the 1960s dozens of villages and small towns have disappeared in giant holes of nearly the same size as the entire area of the city of Cologne. Over 45,000 people have been relocated by the government or fled of their own accord. The closure of these opencast mines has been set for the year 2045. By that time, several thousand more inhabitants will have been forced to leave their homes.

Only in the last few years have the negative health effects of emissions from the combustion of lignite and their influence on the global climate gained more attention, causing increasing civil and political protest against the mining.

Mass protests against the destruction of a forest could currently lead to a reduction in lignite mining in Germany.