Sweden’s state-owned power company,Vattenfall, started inviting bids last month for its East German lignite-generation and mining assets.The plants and mines, with a capacity of more than 8,000 megawatts combined, are worth approximately $2.2 billion. Lignite — considered the lowest rank of coal — has a dirty reputation because of its high carbon dioxide emissions .
Greenpeace plans to fund the acquisition of the plants and mines through crowd funding and donations. As per its estimates, if the plants are sold to another buyer, it would lead to the opening of five new lignite mines and several new power plants.
Greenpeace Sweden’s program manager Annika Jacobson said:
Selling the lignite activities and giving the opportunity to another actor to continue with enormous emissions does not help anyone.We are seriously going to discuss the purchase with Vattenfall. We have good knowledge of the issue of the future energy market and the evolution of climate policies. There are many ways to finance such an acquisition and we are looking at those.Mostly, we would believe it would be our supporters who would be interested in such an acquisition to save the climate.
Vattenfall is the third-largest electricity producer in Germany and the plants and mines put for sale has more than 8,000 employees. The lignite industry provides some 85,000 jobs in Germany as a whole. About 26.3% of Germany’s electricity generation comes from lignite power plants.
Two Czech firms have already expressed early interest in Vattenfall’s plants and mines.
