Brown coal wins a reprieve in Germany's transition to a green future

Even as Europe's biggest economy aspires to be a renewable energy leader, it is exploiting its vast reserves of dirty brown coal, reports Yale Environment 360

The hole in the landscape that opens up in front of the group of visitors is so vast and deep that some of them simply stare, mouths agape. "This mine will be active until 2026 or 2027," says Barbara Wittig, a guide with a local operator of excursions into one of Germany's largest open-pit lignite mines.

Down below at the bottom of the mine, workers are busy running gigantic machines to remove the topsoil and dig deep into a layer of brown coal, or lignite. These rich seams of fossil fuel have provided the Lausitz region, 60 miles southeast of Berlin, with jobs and incomes for more than a century. "We certainly hope that mining will continue after 2027 and we keep producing reliable electricity in our beautiful power plants," Wittig says, pointing toward large cooling towers on the horizon, which send steam into the atmosphere.