[yayachiken]

The big energy suppliers burning coal all sit in Northrhine-Westfalia, the most populous state in Germany.

Migrating away from (black) coal (used mostly in the steel industry) has caused big issues in the Ruhr area ("Strukturwandel", structural shift, meaning migration of significant parts of the workforce from coal to other sectors) in the past, which also means that the population is very wary of phasing out lignite as well. Pretty much everyone knows somebody who lost their job in a mine. Some cities like Gelsenkirchen are still structurally weak, like a lite version of Detroit. This means that politicians mow give expensive political gifts to the coal industry to provide retraining opportunities or early pensions, just so they can claim that they do not "forget" the workers this time.

While in fact, there is maybe 30k people or so in all of Germany employed by coal and its dependent industries. And nobody cares that the wind and solar industry lost 100k or so workers over the last decade due to avoidable regulatory issues and the resulting low project volume.

Anyways, you should not underestimate the amount of respect the coal workers always had in the Ruhr area. Digging coal in a below-ground mine is still the essential definition of "honest work" and sacrifice here. It's probably somewhat comparable to how military service is treated in the US, including the occasional "thank you for your service" and all. There are shrines dedicated to St. Barbara, the patron saint of mining, sprinkled everywhere, because people regularily prayed for their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and friends to come home safely each day. Children learn the Steigerlied in school and sing it before football games. It's even worse than a lobby, the population mostly supports special treatment for the coal workers, as the mining and steel industry is still part of the cultural DNA.

[willyt]

Interesting. Parts of Britain were very similar. Things like every mine union chapter had its own brass band and the mine unions took great pride in thier traditions and thier local communities. Basically it’s neglected miners and steelworkers and other closed down heavy industries in the north of England that voted for Brexit just to pull the rug out from under everyone else because they were thrown on the scrap heap by Thatcher in the 1980’s and those areas never recovered. The liberal voting cities told the mining folk they were idiots for voting for brexit and so they switched allegiances from Labour (closely linked to the unions) to the Conservatives who were telling these people they were going to fix things for them, ‘levelling up’ the North of England. This hasn’t happened there is not even a coherent plan for how it could happen and the new candidates for prime minister are all going on about how they’re going to be more like Thatcher than the others, forgetting that the people who just switched to them hated her for destroying thier way of life. So be careful! Don’t disrespect the miners they will cause chaos if you annoy them!!