Germany Plans to Raze Towns for Brown Coal and Cheap Energy
Villages face the bulldozer as one of Europe’s renewable energy leaders leans more heavily on an old habit.
Feb 13, 2014 10:35 AM ET
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The German village of Atterwasch is tiny, its single street lined with sturdy brick and stone houses. The village has a single church whose bells peal out at noon each day, a small volunteer fire department, and a cemetery with a special section devoted to German soldiers who died nearby in the closing months of World War II.
Atterwasch may soon be gone.
Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, hopes to relocate the village and its residents in order to strip-mine the ground underneath for lignite, or "brown coal."
