Power to the People
Who owns energy sources and governs the energy transition? How can people mobilize for alternatives to fossil dependencies? There is no better place to ask these questions in Germany than the Rheinisches Revier, the region around the surface mine Tagebau Hambach, where the advancing coal mines and the desire for cheap energy have shaped the territory for over a century. The region has recently emerged as one of the battlegrounds of the global climate struggle, culminating in the occupation and eviction of the hamlet of Lützerath in early 2023. The multinational energy corporation RWE (formerly the Rhein-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerke AG) governs all vital processes in the region, from geological structures to social realities and imaginaries, making it omnipresent in every aspect of life. Even as mining operations are being phased out in favor of renewable energy as part of Germany’s intended Kohleausstieg 2030, RWE remains in control of energy transition: in this corporate landscape, wind and solar parks are simply added to coal-fired power plants, based on the unchanged rationale of increasing profits that characterizes the extraction of coal. Fridays for Future, Alle Dörfer bleiben, and other activist and citizen organizations continue their struggle across the region, contesting the corporate greenwashing which deepens capital’s control of the land as well as perpetuates the interconnected crises of climate change, social polarization, cultural erasure, and ecological exhaustion. They demand not just an immediate exit from coal but also a democratically controlled and socially just transition to renewable energy. The world of ecological energy commons, democratically governed, can emerge. Power to the people!
