The Greens’ RWE coal compromise is causing a lot of criticism from environmentalists: According to a report, a close confidant of the Foreign Minister is now moving to that energy giant. There he is to accompany the “political opinion-forming processes on energy-related issues”.
The former head of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s Bundestag office, Titus Rebhann, is to represent the interests of the energy group RWE, which is not at all popular with environmentalists. From March 1, 2023, he will be the head of the capital’s representative office, reports “Welt”.
When the Greens politician became a minister, Rebhann moved with her to the Foreign Office and was part of her team. Here he was released from his previous position in mid-October. Before that, he worked for several years for the office of Green energy politician Oliver Krischer, who has been Environment Minister in North Rhine-Westphalia since June 2022. Rebhann had applied to RWE himself and would support the company’s “transformation” there, the newspaper learned from company circles. The Foreign Office has assured that Rebhann had neither professional contacts with RWE nor participated in projects directly related to RWE during his active time there.
According to the report, from next spring his tasks will include “accompanying the political opinion-forming processes on key energy-related issues and positioning RWE as a competent partner in the field of renewable energies”. Rebhann should deliberately not do any lobbying with the Foreign Office, it said.
At the beginning of October, RWE agreed with the Green-led federal ministries of economics and North Rhine-Westphalia to end lignite-fired power generation by 2030 instead of 2038. In order to ensure the energy supply in the short term, two RWE power plants, which should have been shut down at the end of the year, are to remain connected to the grid until the end of March 2024. According to the agreement, the coal under the Lützerath settlement in the run-up to the Garzweiler opencast mine is also required for this.
Because of this deal, the Greens in the federal government and in North Rhine-Westphalia are massively criticized. “As long as the coal companies make the rules, there will be no climate justice,” said climate activist Luisa Neubauer in a speech at the Green Party Congress in Bonn. The removal of the town of Lützerath provided for in the agreement with RWE is a “real breach of the Paris climate agreement,” said Neubauer.
