Energy transition in the Rhenish mining area-Implications of project funding for green path development

With the phase-out of lignite, the Rhenish mining area is at the beginning of a transformation process that will take decades. Structural funds of almost 15 billion euros are to be allocated as project funding until 2038. The basis for this is the economic and structural programme and a regional consensus with rep-resentatives of the region. The aim of this paper is to investi-gate to what extent the funding project selection helps to es-tablish green development paths and move closer to the am-bitious goal of a sustainable model region for energy supply and production. For this purpose, the characteristics of 22 sub-mitted projects in the "Zukunftsfeld" energy and industry are analysed with regard to a typology of green paths. With the help of nine interviews, framework conditions (design of the funding process and resource endowment of the actors) that influence green path development processes in the Rhenish Revier could be identified. Path renewal processes of the re-gional industry as well as path creation dynamics especially in the hydrogen sector can be found. Overall, the project se - lection is determined by a high proportion of knowledge in-stitutions, whose participation is favoured by the framework conditions. The participation of small and medium sized en-terprises and municipalities, on the other hand, is hampered by the framework conditions, which means that existing regio-nal potentials are not utilized optimally and the transformati-on process as a whole can be compromised.