Germany’s second-biggest coal miner plans to invest €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) in renewable energy at one of its lignite operations as the government increases pressure to phase out the dirtiest fossil fuel.
LEAG will develop 7 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2030 at the Boxberg opencast mine, with the first gigawatt of generating capacity commissioned in four years time, Rainer Schiller, the company’s head of large-scale energy storage, said in an interview. That will be built alongside 3 gigawatt-hours of energy storage and 2 gigawatts of hydrogen production.