"Germany's transition from coal to renewable energy offers lessons for the rest of the world", 2 August 2017

Germany’s transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy — a program called the Energiewende [...] aims to have 80 per cent of the country’s energy generated from renewables by 2050... But what does the transition mean for residents of [...] the Ruhr region — the former industrial coal belt — whose lives and livelihoods have been dramatically altered by the reduced demand for coal? [...] The country also still extracts soft brown coal called lignite... [and] with the federal elections coming up in September, the phaseout of lignite is on the political agenda... While aspects of the decades-long hard coal phaseout have been well managed, [it] has today contributed to a legacy of unemployment... [A] well structured fade-out plan for lignite with clear economic and social measures [is needed]