BOGOTÁ (dpa-AFX) – Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck has promised Colombia support in phasing out coal. After talks with government officials in Bogotá on Wednesday, Habeck said both countries wanted to phase out coal within the next ten years – Colombia out of coal mining and Germany out of coal-fired power generation. Habeck spoke of a great task.
Coal mining in Colombia is also an ecological and social problem. The Colombian Trade Minister German Umaña emphasized the importance of cooperation with Germany in the energy transition.
Habeck said the task now is to build an alternative. This is the production of green hydrogen. This is produced on the basis of renewable energies from wind and sun. Colombia’s potential is “very, very large,” said the Green politician. Germany wants to support the establishment of a hydrogen industry. “And of course we also have companies” that want to buy a climate-neutral energy source instead of coal in the future, said Habeck. Hydrogen should play a key role in the climate-friendly conversion of production processes in Germany.
Habeck also pointed out that at least eleven people died in an explosion in a coal mine in central Colombia. This shows that this “dirty practice” must be ended. As long as coal is mined, it should be done according to controlled standards. The fact that Germany is getting more coal from Colombia is more than ambivalent. “It remains the same: we have to get out of the coal quickly.”
In Germany, it has been agreed for the Rhenish mining area to bring forward the phase-out of coal by eight years to 2030. Habeck wants to achieve this by consensus for the East German lignite mining areas, but there is a lot of resistance there.
In Colombia, the new President Gustavo Petro had announced that he would protect the rainforest and curb the exploitation of raw material deposits. Colombia is currently one of Germany’s major suppliers of coal. Since August, the import of Russian coal into the EU has been banned because of the Ukraine war. In order to secure the energy supply in Germany, coal-fired power plants were also returned to the grid from the reserve.
Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (Greens) signed an agreement with his counterpart on greater cooperation, for example on expanding organic farming. At the same time, Özdemir paid tribute to the path of reconciliation in Colombia. The country suffered 52 years of civil war between left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and the military. Although the security situation has improved after the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the largest rebel group FARC, parts of the South American country are still controlled by illegal groups./hoe/DP/jha
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