Perpetual cost

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Concordia Lake, Oberhausen, late 19th century

Infinity costs , inherited liabilities or eternity tasks are follow-up costs and burdens, for example, after completion of mining arise in certain places or to stay and will be incurred at least for a long time. The term was coined in connection with the final shutdown of the German hard coal mining; it can also be used for the follow-up costs of other mining branches (for example uranium mining in Saxony and Thuringia ) and other branches of industry, for example for the follow-up costs of energy generation through nuclear power (" final storage " and so on). Perpetual burdens mark a branch of industry (in addition to irretrievable consumption of resources ) as unsustainable .

Post-mining landscape

Mining landscapes , including the areas directly as well as indirectly influenced by mining activity, go through several phases from the point in time of the pre-mining landscape to a "stable final state". Above all, the rehabilitation of the post-mining landscape takes a very long time and requires very high financial resources. The social costs incurred for this are called perpetual burdens.

Perpetual burdens in German hard coal mining

The permanent burdens of hard coal mining include mine drainage , polder measures and groundwater purification . This includes in particular the pumping of water into the due to the subsidence higher situated receiving water (for example, in the river Boye ).

In German hard coal mining, the surface of the earth was lowered by up to 40 meters.

Costs and financing

According to an expert report by the auditing firm KPMG on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economics , the perpetual costs of German hard coal mining amount to at least 12.5 to 13.1 billion euros. Mine water management causes the highest costs with 5 billion euros, risks for drinking water are not included. This is offset by provisions of RAG of only 6 billion euros.

The assumption of the perpetual costs of German hard coal mining is regulated by the Hard Coal Financing Act of December 2007. In advance, at the request of RAG Aktiengesellschaft and in agreement with the federal government , the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland as well as IG BCE, the RAG Foundation was established. The purpose and task of the RAG-Stiftung is, among other things, to build up foundation assets by the end of 2018, which will be used from 2019 to finance the perpetual costs (permanent mine damage, mine drainage and groundwater purification).

According to the report by the auditing company KPMG, the foundation's capital stock should reach a level of at least 8 billion euros by the end of 2018. To this end, in 2007 a control and profit and loss transfer agreement was concluded between the RAG Foundation and RAG Aktiengesellschaft. The RAG Foundation also acquired Evonik Industries from RAG Aktiengesellschaft.

Eternal burdens of the Ruhr area

In the hard coal mining of the Ruhr area, the surface of the earth was lowered by up to 25 meters. Downtown Essen , for example, is 16 meters lower. Without constant pumping of the groundwater , large parts of the Ruhr area would be a lake landscape. Almost a fifth of the region (within the limits of the Ruhr Regional Association with an area of ​​4,435 km²) would be under water.

In Walsum on the Lower Rhine alone , 20 million cubic meters are pumped out every year. The trend is towards building central pumping systems like in Walsum. Mine water is currently being pumped to the surface at ten locations in the Ruhr area, work is currently underway on two more, and a thirteenth location was dry as of 2016. A total of around 80 million cubic meters are pumped to the surface in the Ruhr area every year.

The plans of RAG Aktiengesellschaft envisaged that with the end of the coal subsidies and the end of hard coal mining in the Ruhr area in 2018, the pumping of the groundwater will be stopped, which will save annual costs of around 200 million euros. As a result, waters with high levels of salt and other pollutants such as PCBs threaten to mix with the groundwater. The new plans of RAG (as of 2019) provide for dewatering with six locations. The first step in the approval process is the environmental impact assessment .

Due to mining law permits (dispensable the environmental approvals made) were in the 1990s in four mines (including the Consolidation colliery , Haus Aden colliery and mine Walsum , trial basis Zollverein coal mine in Essen and Zeche Ewald / Hugo colliery in Gelsenkirchen) in the Ruhr more disposed of more than 700,000 tons of highly toxic filter dust from waste incineration plants . Harald Friedrich , for example, fears that after the artificial lowering of the groundwater level by pumping it out, there is a risk of pollution of the groundwater . The relevant discussions were not yet concluded in mid-2013.

Eternal burdens in the Saar district

The last mine in Saarland closed in 2012.

Reisbach in Saarwellingen is an example of the areas in the Saar district that are deeper than the drainage systems due to subsidence due to mining .

RAG AG plans to discontinue mine water management in the Saar district in the long term. The mine water level should rise in several phases; The mines in Saarland should be completely flooded by 2035. The inheritance contract from 2007 does not rule this out.

Compared to the planned costs of 16.5 million euros for lifting 18 million cubic meters of mine water from the closed Saar collieries per year, the costs in 2019 are around 50 million euros.

Perpetual burdens in German lignite opencast mining

Open- cast lignite mining, preferably open-cast mining , leads to significant changes in the landscape, for example on the Lower Rhine or in the Lusatian lignite mining district . Even the civil engineering leads, mostly on subsidence, significant changes in the landscape.

In lignite mining, for example, these eternal consequences are to be counteracted by creating a post-mining landscape . For example, the natural terrace landscape from the bank terraces of the Rhine is replaced by an artificial landscape .

Sometimes arise at the artificial lakes landslides .

Perpetual burdens in German uranium mining

Between 1950 and 1990 uranium mining in Saxony and Thuringia for the Soviet Union produced uranium in open pit and underground. The water that collects in these mining facilities has to be pumped out and cleaned.

Perpetual burdens of nuclear energy

The long-term pollution of nuclear energy includes the costs of final storage .

Individual evidence

  1. Sabine Tischew: Renaturation after brown coal mining. Springer-Verlag, 2013, pp. 25–26.
  2. Societal costs of lignite (p. 6 f.) Greenpeace , accessed on March 25, 2019
  3. Financial provisions in the lignite sector (p. 48 f.) Forum Ecological-Social Market Economy , accessed on March 25, 2019
  4. A question of coal Die Welt from September 30, 2016, accessed on March 25, 2019
  5. a b Land unter - living on credit (s). In: Website of the show [w] how to know. Das Erste, June 18, 2014, accessed February 10, 2018 .
  6. a b KPMG study: Perpetual costs of coal amount to 13 billion euros - Unpredictable risks for drinking water. In: PresseBox website. Press release Wirtschaftswoche, December 14, 2006, accessed on February 10, 2018 .
  7. Thomas Mader: Why the Ruhr area would be a lake district without pumps.
  8. Quarks : How We Cope With The Consequences Of Mining.
  9. https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/article158457994/Eine-Frage-der-Kohle.html
  10. Tobias Heibach: The way into eternity. Start of the final approval procedure for the NRW mine water concept . In: coal. The RAG Aktiengesellschaft employee magazine, year 2019, issue 3, pp. 8–9, here p. 8.
  11. Johannes Nitschmann: Ticking time bombs in closed mines. In: The world. July 28, 2013, accessed February 10, 2018 .
  12. https://umweltrecht.legal/2018/07/nicht-ewige-ewigkeitslasten-bundesregierung-beantendung-rechtsfragen-zum-geplanten-grubenwasseranstieg-im-saarrevier/
  13. https://www.saarbruecker-zeitung.de/saarland/saarland/rag-sieh-keine-pflicht-zum-ewigen-pumpen_aid-7108826
  14. Alexander Preker: Saarland: dispute over the flooding of the old hard coal mines comes to a head. In: Spiegel Online . February 9, 2019, accessed April 12, 2020 .
  15. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/manuskript-vom-umgang-mit-ewigkeitslasten.media.e8953620795d41d1f55c7ece8ec53e18.txt
  16. Klaus Brunsmeier, Michael Müller: The eternity burdens of the atomic age - opinion. In: fr.de. July 4, 2016, accessed April 12, 2020 .