News in Brief 01_2022

On 7th December 2021, Peter Schrimpf, Chairman of the Board of Executives of RAG Aktiengesellschaft, Essen/Germany, and Chairman of the Board of Stiftung Zollverein, Essen, welcomed Ina Scharrenbach, Minister for Home, Community, Construction and Equality of North Rhine-Westphalia. Together, they travelled into the depths: 1,000 m below the surface of the earth, they visited the mine water management pumping systems ...

STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany (Figure 1), presents encouraging key figures at the end of the third quarter of the current business year. Both sales and group EBIT are above the previous year’s level. In 2020, the energy company still had to cope with a difficult year owing to extraordinary burdens from the phasing out of coal and a process of transformation ...

At the Research Center of Post-Mining (FZN) at TH Georg Agricola University (THGA), Bochum/Germany, Julia Tiganj (Figure 1) is studying the socio-economic aspects of post-mining. In times of raw material scarcity and the energy transition, the economics researcher’s attention is especially drawn to China. Will the world’s second-largest economy manage the transition to renewable energy? What are the greatest challenges ...

EnergieAgentur.NRW, Düsseldorf/Germany, stopped working towards the end of 2021. Over many years, the Energie-Agentur energy agency has presented a variety of technical, process engineering, economic and environmental subjects around mining in joint discussions and gained increased interest, not least from operating companies and customers outside Germany. In doing so, the agency earned some credit with service providers as well as ...

In 2021, energy consumption in Germany reached 12,193 PJ or 416.1 Mtce (Figure 1). This is a rise of 2.6 % compared to the previous year. However, the Working Group on Energy Balances (AG Energiebilanzen), Berlin/Germany, states energy consumption is still noticeably below pre-Covid levels which indicates that energy and overall economic development in Germany is still heavily affected by the ...

Events during the year 2021 illustrate very clearly that supply security is and will remain one of the most important topics of the energy transition. The penultimate act in the nuclear power exit in Germany, the shutdown of 4 GW of power plant capacity, points to the importance of the remaining base of controllable, secure capacity. Securing power supply during ...

At the end of last year, mining companies were still anticipating development to be cautious and slow. This assumption has proven to be only partially correct. Between January and September 2021, the number of contracts coming in increased by 75 % compared to the previous year. In contrast, turnover in German mining companies is lagging behind. In 2020, the industry achieved ...

On 1st November 2021, Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Dieter Stoll (Figure 1), director emeritus of the Institute of Mining Engineering III at RWTH Aachen University, Aachen/Germany, passed away at the age of 88. Prof. Stoll studied mining at RWTH from 1954 onwards, after graduating from high school, completing a period of practical training as a miner in the USA, and graduating ...