"In the current crisis, we are contributing to security of supply in Germany by temporarily increasing the use of our lignite-fired power plants and are thus also helping to displace gas from electricity generation," said RWE Chief Executive Markus Krebber in a statement.

"At the same time, we are investing billions of euros to accelerate the energy transition and are ready to phase out lignite by 2030," he added.

(Writing by Miranda Murray, editing by Rachel More)