“WWF: NRW burns more lignite than the entire USA”

The new governing coalition of conservative CDU and economic liberal FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is set to undermine the country’s climate protection goals, environmental organisation WWF says in a press release. The CDU-FDP coalition agreement “runs counter to the federal government’s climate goals”, particularly in the fields of coal-fired power production and wind power generation, WWF says. One third of Germany’s CO₂ emissions came from heavy-industry heartland NRW. The new government seemed intent on “a rollback” of the Energiewende by avoiding any decrease of coal-fired power production and severely limiting the area available for wind power expansion.
WWF Germany’s Michael Schäfer told newspaper Rheinische Post that “NRW alone burns more lignite than the entire USA”.

Read the press release in German here and the article in Rheinische Post in German here.

For background, see the CLEW factsheet The German state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.