East Frisian Citizens’ Campaign Beats Danish Energy Company

A great success for the environmental campaigns is the recent decision of DONG Energy not to build a coal power station in the region of Emden in the north-western part of Germany.

By Ditte Gurack

The Citizens’ Campaign “Saubere Luft Ostfriesland” has been fighting against the plans for a year and although there didn’t seem to be much hope organised lots of initiatives and cross border actions. In March 2009 a torch-campaign took place in Emden, Eemshaven (Netherlands) and Borkum (Germany) to show that pollution is borderless and should be treated cross-frontier. Groups engaged in protecting the northern coastal zones connected to each other to oppose proposals to construct similar plants near Eemshaven and Lubmin (north-eastern Germany), too.

 “It is a tremendous success for us, our children, our landscape, and our climate not to suffer of 9 million tons of CO2” says Susanne Gersema, spokeswoman of the campaign. But there’s still a lot to be done: to stop the plans for Eemshaven and Lubmin and on the other hand to support the construction of plants for renewable energies. This is also the opinion of Daniela Setton, expert on coal of the climate-alliance in Berlin: “Coal power stations are an antiquated, inefficient form to produce electricity which we do not need and which our citizens do not want.”