Climate Summit Heats Up: DONG Energy Cars Torched

As with any global importance meeting, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen began drawing its share of protesters. And, just like with all such protesting groups, their means to make their message heard is not always peaceful.

During Sunday night, some three hours prior to an approved protest against Danish-owned energy company DONG (Dansk Olie og Naturgas), three of the company's vehicles were set alight by a group of unidentified people. According to Reuters, the three cars were wearing the DONG logo and were torched in two separate areas of Copenhagen.

According to the source, the legal protest scheduled to take place near a a DONG Energy office in Copenhagen was supposed to challenge DONG's plans of building their first coal-fired power station in Germany.

The strange part is that DONG announced on December 11 it will "withdraw from the project exploring the opportunities of building a new power plant near the town of Greifswald in northern Germany."

“DONG Energy relies on close collaboration with the local communities that we serve. We have therefore reacted to the perceived lack of necessary political backing for the project from the state government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Consequently, we have resolved to withdraw from the project plans, which will enable us to devote our full efforts to other investment projects in our pipeline,” Anders Eldru, DONG CEO said in a release.

According to the CEO, a company spokesman will meet protesters in Copenhagen to talk about the issues.