Lützerath (Reuters) - Massive police forces began clearing the occupied lignite village of Lützerath in North Rhine-Westphalia on Wednesday.

According to eyewitnesses, officers forced their way into the village occupied by climate activists, which has become a symbol of the anti-coal movement. The police officers were greeted with stones and fireworks being thrown.

"The evacuation of #Lützerath has begun," announced the Aachen police. A police spokesperson had previously said that the conversion and securing of the area around Lützerath had been completed. The energy giant RWE wants to demolish the hamlet in order to be able to excavate the lignite located under the village. "RWE Power will begin dismantling the former settlement of Lützerath today," the company announced. It called on the squatters to be non-violent.

The background to the eviction is a plan presented last October by Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur and RWE CEO Markus Krebber, according to which the phase-out of climate-damaging coal energy in NRW is to take place as early as 2030, eight years earlier than originally planned. In the short term, however, more coal is to be mined in view of the energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lützerath would have to make way to cover the demand.

North Rhine-Westphalia's Environment Minister Oliver Krischer backed the decisions on Wednesday. "We have concluded an agreement with RWE that will lead to the open-cast mine being reduced by half," Krischer said on Deutschlandfunk radio. RWE had the right to excavate the coal under Lützerath. It is perfectly all right to protest against this. But there should be no violence.

RWE pointed out that coal mining was necessary in order to operate the lignite-fired power plants at high capacity and thus save gas in electricity generation in Germany. The original population of just under 100 in the small village had all been relocated. According to RWE calculations, the earlier closure of the coal-fired power plants in the Rhenish mining area will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 280 million tons. Lützerath would have to be used by RWE for lignite mining, NRW Economics Minister Neubaur admitted - "even if I would have wished it differently." The plans are controversial among the Green Party. The 2030 coal phase-out agreed between Habeck and RWE in the Rhineland coalfield only received a narrow majority at a federal Green Party conference in the fall.

(Report by Wolfgang Rattay, Petra Wischgoll, Matthias Inverardi, Tom Käckenhoff; edited by Hans Busemann; If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)