Shutting down fossil-fuel power plants is DIY. Have courage!

We sent the following statement yesterday, January 3, 2026, to Spiegel, taz, RBB24, RBB Fernsehen, and Radio Eins. Due to political calculations, our statement has not been made public to this day, except for a brief broadcast at 5:30 a.m. on Radio Eins. Afterward, all quotes disappeared following our intervention. This is not in the interest of those politically responsible at Stromnetz Berlin, the city of Berlin, the business community, the police, and other political forces. The media outlets contacted are acting accordingly to prevent any substantive discussion.

Stromnetz Berlin initially downplayed the damage caused by the fire at the cable bridge. While Stromnetz Berlin was likely able to compensate for the sabotage of the power plant in approximately 50,000 households by purchasing expensive electricity, the question of why this was not possible for approximately 40,000 households in Nikolassee, Wannsee, Zehlendorf, and parts of Lichterfelde is something Stromnetz owes the public an answer for. The ball is now in Stromnetz Berlin's court.

We would like to express our sincere apologies once again for the inconvenience caused to the less affluent, more vulnerable members of the population. They were not the intended target of this action. We ask the public for mutual aid and solidarity. In particular, we request assistance for those requiring care and their families, the destitute residents of these neighborhoods, people who are isolated and those overwhelmed by the situation.

As already mentioned, our sympathy for the owners of the many villas, the real estate companies, the embassies, and other elite wealthy individuals in the area is limited. The rich and their self-centered, antisocial lifestyle are currently destroying the planet.

The sabotage of the gas-fired power plant is, among other things, a necessary measure against the expansion of fossil gas power plants in Germany. In our statement, we outline the connections between wealth, an imperial life-mode, and the destruction of our livelihoods, which we all must oppose.

We ask the residents of Bremer Straße to maintain confidentiality. For further verification: There were approximately 64 pipes under the cable bridge, most of which were carrying high-voltage cables. We connected these with four construction stakes to ensure a short circuit.

[beginning of original letter to media]

INTRODUCTION

Volcano Group: Cutting off the power of those in power

NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS 2026. HAVE COURAGE!

We can no longer afford the rich.
We can begin the end of the imperial life-mode.
We can stop the plundering of the earth.

In the greed for energy, the earth is being drained, sucked dry, burned, ravaged, razed, raped, and destroyed. Entire regions are rendered uninhabitable by the heat. They simply burn up. Or habitats disappear beneath the waves during floods or due to rising sea levels. Shutting down fossil fuel power plants is DIY. Have courage. We know we must stop this destruction. We know we are not alone. Don't give up hope for a world with space for life, instead of greed for money, power, and destruction. Last night, we successfully sabotaged the gas-fired power plant in Berlin-Lichterfelde. This caused power outages in the wealthier districts of Wannsee, Zehlendorf, and Nikolassee. Power outages were not the goal of the action; the fossil fuel industry was. We apologize to the less affluent people in southwest Berlin. Our sympathy for the many villa owners in these districts is limited. We explain why in our post below. Our action for the public good is socially beneficial. We also address this issue in more detail in our letter regarding the action.

The attack on the gas-fired power plant is an act of self-defense and international solidarity with all those who protect the earth and life. The infrastructure that serves the "technological assault" and promotes the destruction of the earth can be sabotaged. Fossil fuel energy production can be stopped. Smart city metropolises, like Berlin, can be prevented. Stromnetz Berlin, a building block of this catastrophic vision of a smart city, has been hit.
For us, it goes without saying that we ruled out any risk to human life at all times.
Our detailed explanation is attached.

NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS 2026. HAVE COURAGE!

Greed for power, greed for energy, greed for destruction.

In the greed for energy, the earth is being drained, sucked dry, burned, ravaged, razed, raped, and destroyed. Entire regions are rendered uninhabitable by the heat. They simply burn up. Or habitats disappear beneath the waves during floods or due to rising sea levels. Several thousand inhabitants of Tuvalu in the Pacific are already seeking refuge in Australia.

Last year, the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere rose to 423.9 parts carbon dioxide per million, a value that surpasses all previous records. At the same time, climate scientists agree that the massive transatlantic ocean currents will collapse sooner or later due to global warming. This collapse of the ocean currents, which has so far afforded the North a mild climate, is only one part of the catastrophe that awaits us. The extent of this devastation is simply ignored, abstracted, and discussed at global climate conferences until the scale of the destruction disappears into tables and declarations of intent.

But the hunger for energy is insatiable, devouring the earth's crust and our lives, among other things, to feed artificial intelligence, which then spouts stereotypes and absurdities, confusing, disorienting, and/or manipulating us. Meanwhile, language, expression, and vitality are increasingly reduced, mutilated, and limited with each new "training" of the AI on previous data.

We feed our data to the so-called "clouds," which are nothing more than gigantic, energy-guzzling data centers and server farms. These also consume our drinking water and churn out numbers that bombard our screens with useless, supposedly important spam until we've forgotten how to look our neighbor in the eye. Having become dependent on these small devices, we're always ready to send an emoji and feed "Big Brother," whose algorithm registers our deviations from the norm and answers our search queries before we've even finished thinking. We sit among our friends while the feeds devour us, sinking into our devices instead of having real conversations. We're managing our own surveillance, and it's totalized. [The tech companies are in the hands of the powerful men we give them[. We consume the colorful images that the machines filter and serve up to us, starving from loneliness and alienation in front of our screens. We are becoming 'swiping zombies,' knocking each other over in traffic. We are prisoners in a digital system that, increasingly, deprives us of our right to exist unless we submit to its rules and relocate our lives to social media, chat, and artificial realities. We can't receive money, book tickets or buy anything with cash. Without access to the digital world, we are increasingly excluded, losing touch with what seems normal. We fear what will happen to us, and instead of switching off our devices and removing the power of those who track, monitor, observe, and manipulate us, we bury ourselves even deeper in our screens. We are blinding ourselves to the knowledge for the dissemination of which Edward Snowden risked his life. We are turning a deaf ear to the cries of Indigenous peoples and farmers who see the planet's life support system burning before their very eyes. On the contrary, with every post we feed the fire that is encircling us and driving temperatures to new record highs every year. One day we will simply sit in front of glowing screens or inert devices, dying of thirst and hunger. It's no longer hard to imagine.

We aren't claiming we know the way out. We do know, though, that we must stop this destruction. Once we've tasted the spreading fear-sweat, when there's no escape, hedonism can no longer captivate us. There is no way forward, no going back, only the horror of where we, as humanity, have ended up. We are left again with the question, from the survivors, the next generation: You saw what was coming; what did you actually do to prevent it?

Please don't suggest the political parties. Please don't bring up the brown-shirted "alternative" in pinstriped suits and dresses, nor the Greens nor the Left either. Don't suggest the economy, the free market that was supposed to solve the problem. Economics and politics deal with death every day, with dictatorships and butchers. All concerns vanish when it comes to satisfying our energy needs. Russia is still supplying gas to Europe via Nord Stream 1, and the US wants Venezuela's oil. That's why military attacks are now taking place, and fracked gas arrives by ship from all over the world. Currently, 79% of it comes from the USA! And fracking is extremely environmentally damaging. Even during extraction, there is assumed methane loss of 6 to 10 percent, which further warms the atmosphere.

95% of the gas burned in Germany is imported. At climate summits, only strategic lip service is forthcoming, because the oil-producing countries are interested in money, not climate protection. Because the major cities base their policies on money and growth, lobbyists in Europe are essentially being granted cancellation of the combustion engine phase-out.

For example, the German Minister of Economic Affairs, Katharina Reiche, was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport, a lobbyist for the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKM), and a manager at the E.ON subsidiary Westenergie. Minister Reiche presents herself as a supporter of hydrogen but primarily relies on natural gas. She plans to issue tenders for additional gas-fired power plants with a capacity of 10 gigawatts, which are to be connected to the grid by 2031, corresponding to approximately 25 new power plants. 20 billion euro are earmarked for these new gas-fired power plants.

Reiche would prefer to postpone Germany's climate neutrality target from 2045 to 2050 anyway.

The main culprits behind human-induced climate destruction aren't the ones who suffer the most, the ones who pay with their health and their lives. The people of the Global South are already paying the highest price. The countries of the Global North, and soon China, among others, are deciding the fate of everyone.

China, as a communist, racist, and patriarchal dictatorship, can use "rare earth elements" to blackmail countries that don't toe the line, gradually weaving countries, cultures, and political systems into the cocoon of this new dictatorial world power. Over 85% of the world's refined "rare earth elements" come from China. It is the rich who are the problem, it is the super-rich who are setting the world ablaze in the East, in the West, in the South, and in the North. Sixty percent of the super-rich's investments worldwide go into gas and oil, and around 300 super-rich countries emit more CO₂ than the 110 poorest countries in the world.

These criminals know it. They don't care. Their greed for even more wealth and power sets the standard which everyone else follows. They're preparing their own "salvation" on isolated islands or in space once they've burned this planet. A few years ago, we would have laughed at these misogynistic lunatics, but they're dead serious. Zuckerberg wants more "masculine energy." Musk is "producing" children on an assembly line so his clan can survive.

None of the perpetrators are solving the "problem." And certainly, the fundamental problem doesn't have a regional solution. On the contrary: the whole world is arming itself for the final great battle for raw materials, water, food, and access to strategically important regions, in order to prevent, or at least postpone, the demise of its own spheres of influence. The aim is that the populace can continue being offered the opportunity to participate for as long as possible, so that we in the Global North, entangled in a world of consumption and an imperial life-mode, participate in and reinforce the power structure with its increasingly authoritarian frameworks. This is because it's no longer about freedom for all, only about security for a select few. The promise of security is an exclusive right of those who can enforce it for themselves. We make the losers, those who are too weak to defend themselves against "us," pay for our imperial life-mode.

With our militant action, we reject the offers of participation in a world ravaged by destruction. That is why we targeted the gas-fired power plant in Lichterfelde.

This will not prevent our own complicity in an imperial life-mode at the expense of other life, but it will send a signal, again, just as many people and groups in different parts of the world are doing. Just as some groups here, such as the volcano groups, have been doing consistently since 2011.

We know these words will not reach many people; they've become so separated from the possibility of a world and a coexistence based on something besides destruction that these words can't reach them, any more than does the world's misery broadcast daily in high definition on their screens. We can list facts for miles and still find no one to listen.

We are not the first, and we will not be the last, to try to reach people with words. We are not the first nor the last to resort to sabotage, because we are playing for time. At the same time, we and others are using this time gained to roll back the destruction of all life. People call us eco-terrorists, yet we respect life. They call us irresponsible, yet we take responsibility to end this destructive imperial life-mode.

Our public-spirited action is socially beneficial. We are trying to interrupt the exploitation of the earth, prevent CO₂-related deaths, and halt diseases linked to the climate catastrophe. We are also trying to put an end to species extinction and make the world a more livable place for everyone. Those who call us "eco-terrorists" are themselves the real eco-terrorists, using this term to serve their own selfish interests and power calculations.

We see the unconscious, those who consider themselves clever and who dismiss climate change as fake news. Those who mistake empathy for 'wokeness' and only think of their own advantage without recognizing how things around them are interconnected. Behind this spreading rejection of facts, we see a system of those who invest in the destruction of the earth. These are the same people who hold the power over the tech companies that allow them to breed a human species that applauds when people drown, die of thirst, starve, or otherwise perish in an attempt to reach Europe or the USA. These manipulated welfare chauvinists and party supporters second Trump, Modi, Milei, Netanyahu, Merz, Weidel, Putin, Höcke, Orban, Vans, Xi and all the rest in the "defense" of freedom. The freedom to decide who must die and who must not, who has access to wealth and who must not. Every refugee who dies while fleeing has a counterpart here in deep depression. Every person who starves to death makes us all fatter and sicker.

We, the people of the Global North, of the wealthy metropoli, derive no benefit from the misery of others. Material wealth is not 'wealth' in the sense of an ideal that brings joy to all lives. If even a tiny segment of the population in every country says, "Enough is enough. Not 'us' together anymore, not in my name. No more human beings should die at our expense," if we refuse to work and play along, if we become a nuisance in the machine that we ourselves have been feeding, then something will begin to move. Then we can develop the strength to stop the root causes once and for all.

But we need an international movement that rejects a "progress" based solely on destruction, murder, and plunder. Desperate, angry, and determined, we call out, joining the calls of others: sabotage the fossil fuel infrastructure, the power grids, the exploitation of the earth, the data centers, the microchip industry and its suppliers; destroy the foundations of the automotive and arms industries, of air travel, villas, yachts, spaceships, and golf courses. Destroy the police headquarters that guarantee patriarchal property relations, for the earth belongs to itself and to all living beings, not to humans, or rather, not to men alone, and not to the richest among them. This cry of despair is also a wake-up call, a cry of hope, and it has no local boundaries; it is global. We are talking about an international movement that does not invoke a patriarch, nor the gallery of heads venerated by communists, but one that proceeds from diverse premises. It is understood in China, in Europe, the USA, in India and Pakistan, in every corner of the earth where Starlink has reception, in every country where the deadly drone seeks its target and requires electricity to do so. In every country where, without energy, the warring forces are blinded and people can leave the battlefields without anyone being able to issue the order to kill them, where stock exchanges no longer function and bitcoins can no longer be accessed.

We'll say again: we have ideas, not definitive answers about the path. But we do have answers about the goal. Every contribution counts. Trying everything within our power to put an end to this imperial life-mode cannot be wrong. The progress of destruction is man-made; we can also stop it. We will find and recognize ourselves in steps taken towards resistance, in the echoes of diverse languages and cultures, in what others send us. It is about the earth. It is about life. It is directed against immature, stupid men in positions of power who behave as if they were operating a toy excavator.

There is no time for frustration over the resistance to man-made climate change and the growing number of those who deny it. We must learn from our defeats, not by joining political parties, withdrawing or resigning ourselves to collapse, but by taking action. Shutting down a gas-fired power plant is one such action, but it could also include occupying land, open spaces, and forests, or destroying golf courses and airports owned by the wealthy. What's necessary are imagination and determination.

Switch off the greed for energy, switch off the digital management of life, switch off the progress of destruction.

Today we attacked the gas and steam turbine power plant in Lichterfelde. The plant produces a total electrical output of 300 MW using natural gas. Our target was the high-voltage power lines, with the aim of causing significant damage to the company. We set fire to the cable bridge, which is not publicly documented and runs from the Lichterfelde power plant across the Teltow Canal, on the side facing the green space. We then short-circuited the charred cable strands with steel bars that were lying around.

The energy company will have to purchase electricity on the open market in real time to fulfill its contractual obligations to supply electricity as soon as the supply disruption is noticed. We do not expect to have disconnected 100,000 households from the grid, but rather only from the gas-fired power plant's network. The multiply redundant power grid will reconnect the households via other power lines within a very short time through the extensive power network. Purchasing energy at short notice at market prices may be more expensive than when the energy company bought the electricity on the Leipzig Power Exchange (EEX); the company has no other option to avoid paying high contractual penalties to individual energy consumers. We short-circuited over twenty 110 kV lines and did not include district heating pipes in the attack, but we cannot rule out an impact on the district heating system.

Our action differs practically from the September 9, 2025 action in Adlershof against the technology center. There, the action involved a supply line that lacked redundant protection. The situation was similar for the "Turn Off Tesla - Volcano Group," which disconnected Tesla from the grid by destroying a supply line and affected around 5,000 private households. In our case, the power is not being cut off in front of a facility like the technology park or the Gigafactory, causing a blackout there, but rather the power plant with its extensive network of cables is being disconnected from the grid. It is still producing electricity, but can no longer feed it into the grid and therefore cannot supply it. The supply of electricity to private households via other power plants remains intact, and this is also the intention of the authorities and energy companies. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that our action will cause significant damage to individual transformer stations.

The supply of district heating (thermal output around 690 MW) has not been interrupted by our actions.

Individual households are not the target of this action. The aim is to inflict significant damage on the gas industry and the insatiable demand for energy.

If extended outages occur in private households, we want to make it clear that they are not the intended targets of this attack. This effect was neither intended nor calculated by us. We have ruled out any risk to human life at all times.

Since we cannot be absolutely certain about the potential chain reactions, beyond our control, that our shutdown of the gas plant might trigger, we make the following request to potentially affected households: Ring your neighbors' doorbells. Consider providing for elderly or vulnerable individuals during a power outage. Support yourself and others by offering assistance. Keep each other informed.

The Lichterfelde power plant was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall AB, with an annual turnover of €7.6 billion and the fourth-largest electricity company after E.ON, RWE, and EnBW. From 2021, the power plant was "re-municipalized" and now belongs to the city of Berlin. As a result, the power plant is being partially dismantled and converted to increase capacity. This only sounds good at first glance.

Stromnetz Berlin GmbH is currently making extensive investments in expanding Berlin's grid infrastructure to meet the growing demands of the so-called "energy transition." For this, Stromnetz Berlin's subsidiary BEN (Berliner Energie und Netzholding GmbH) is receiving €380 million from the European Investment Bank – "to prepare for the advancing energy transition." The "energy transition" is a smokescreen that obscures the fact that it's about energy without any transition, without ifs, ands, or buts. The main thing is energy, sustainable or not. Stromnetz Berlin plans to double its capacity by the beginning of 2030.

The goal is a "modern," digitized electricity grid. Specifically, this means hundreds of thousands of meters of new power cables and grid components, as well as more digital services. As you might imagine, this isn't being done out of the goodness of their hearts. Ostensibly, it's about the city's security of supply, but on closer inspection, it's about a mania for growth in a government-driven competition. The battleground is the city and our living conditions. The city is a commodity. Competitiveness with other major cities is intended to drive the establishment of more startups, more defense research and manufacturing companies, more digital service providers, and tech companies that consume even more electricity than the millions of Berliners use privately.

It's also about e-mobility, which of course doesn't aim to promote public transport, but rather to generate even more cars powered by lithium batteries, even more AI-driven systems that churn out self-driving private vehicles. This is all masquerading as "infrastructure expansion," which will cost the state another 3 billion euro by 2029, as the A100 motorway continues to encroach deeper into the city. Investments of up to 770 million euro are being made to modernize the power grid.

All of this sounds incredibly dull, but it's of great importance to us as people in Berlin and Brandenburg, because it's our lives, our land, our water, our futures that are at stake. For Giffey, the Social Democratic Party's economic liberal, expanding grid capacity and building new power lines is a key prerequisite for Berlin's attractiveness as an investment location. These economically liberal destroyers of a livable future think of the city in terms of numbers, sums of money, growth rates, and competition with other cities. People don't count, or count only as categories of low-income or high-income earners. The former must somehow be managed and contained-- even via police and repressive measures such as walling off a park in Kreuzberg-- and the latter must be flattered, because their money stimulates consumption. The city is made smart and beautiful for this group. Berlin is a brand and marketed as such.

For Giffey, expansion of the power grid is like the rapid digitalization of everyday life: as if it's a force of nature crashing down upon us. As if tech companies and tech fascists weren't deciding on the implementation of AI, which, according to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, will double global electricity consumption by 2030. As if politicians and economic liberals weren't themselves deciding when cash payments are no longer possible on BVG buses and people are forced into digital payments, thereby also being tracked, in a defiant city with a tradition of militant movements that must be controlled. As if politicians weren't deciding when they provide the surveillance software Palantir to police and intelligence services, software whose driving force is a fascist from the USA and whose software envisions a digital network for monitoring people.

Giffay promotes the expansion of the grid with "our" companies and the increasing electrification of mobility: "Out of love for Berlin, the most modern electricity grid for the climate-neutral capital." And, adept at defusing criticism, Stromnetz Berlin has included "citizens' councils," as mere fig leaves which can exercise laughable participation in trivial matters but have no say in the direction of energy policy decisions or the city's development. After Vattenfall and the city were forced, due to a broad citizens' initiative, to initiate "re-municipalization," a nationalization of the electricity grid, and appoint BEN as the owner, they are carrying on with business as usual, and the madness continues unabated.

The vision is clear. Smart City – Stromnetz Berlin states it: "Berlin is on its way to becoming one of the leading smart city metropolises. This transformation process has already begun in all areas of urban life." And: "Intelligent infrastructures, and especially the 'smart grid' (intelligent power grid), will form the foundation – as a networked operating system, it will become the backbone and catalyst of the energy transition." Apart from the fact that we consider the term "energy transition" to be a smokescreen and would replace it with "technological attack on humane conditions," we agree.

The specific attacks on the Adlershof Technology Park, Tesla's Gigafactory, the infrastructure of the Vattenfall Reuter coal-fired power plant, and the Vodafone hub in Adlershof are reference points for our action, as are the many militant actions that are setting an example against the destruction of our planet.

Even if these acts of sabotage cause significant financial losses, they cannot, as individual actions, force a change in political direction. But they point the way and the direction that we recommend to all major cities. Disable the infrastructure that serves the "technological attack" and that promotes destruction of the earth. The consensus regarding participation in the project of an imperial life-mode is irrevocable. A mass social movement against the global destruction of the foundations of life and against all wars and resource plunder goes hand in hand with the ability to sabotage power grids and energy networks.

The attack on the gas-fired power plant is an act of international solidarity with all those who protect the earth and life. Our resistance is multifaceted, and often amidst the fog of disinformation, differing cultural perspectives, and linguistic differences it takes far too long to recognize our common ground. But we are confident that even in darkness, the light is not far off. When we place this action within the context of a global resistance-- whether in the USA, Latin America, Asia, China, or Russia, in Europe or Australia-- directed against all forms of domination, dominion, and destruction of the earth, we are confident that we will be heard, that these contributions will be translated, that translated contributions will reach us, that a subversive communication will take place along the winding paths of resistance, a communication where we recognize one another... and intervene. If possible, without bloodshed, but with the determination to cut off the power of those in power.

Volcano Group: Cutting off the power of those in power

We can no longer afford the rich.

Begin the end of the imperial life-mode.

Shutting down fossil fuel power plants is DIY.

Stop the plundering of the earth.

Freedom for all antifascists, climate actionists and all other rebels