German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.

I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
20 points

It’s really bad for $$ to do the responsible thing, so we’re going to proceed with existential environmental degradation. Because $.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

To be completely honest (and I am a huge anti-coal-mining dude), currently I’m happy that we still have the coalmines running. It would not have been possible to build solar and wind power fast enough to compensate for the coalmines, the only feasible alternative would have been gas and that comes from russia

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Or to have kept your nuclear running and not freaked out after the fukushima disaster…

Just saying

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Correct. You can add the vastly underestimated methane emissions of natural gas to that. (They are hard to measure but nobody seems toooo interested)

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Maybe nuclear could’ve been better than coal?

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

There are a lot of things which in hindsight were better than coal. But when the decision was made to dig where the wind farm is, there wouldn’t have been any time to build a nuclear power plant anymore

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Germany is still going to use the same amount of coal whether this runs or not, they’d just import it from another country or have another mine go faster if there’s one that still can

The way to reduce coal is to increase low carbon sources of energy and to reduce consumption

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Nope. Dont import and scarsity will drive prices up and people use less. It’s pretty simple really.

We need to keep all fossil fuels in the ground. The way we do this is reduce energy usage.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Do you really think it’s more responsible to force the families out of their homes and demolish several villages/towns over some old wind turbines? Or did you mean the responsible thing being investing in renewables? I really can’t tell, sorry 😅

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Obviously the latter

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

It’s more responsible to stop mining fossil fuels.

permalink
report
parent
reply

World News

!worldnews@lemmy.ml

Create post

News from around the world!

Rules:

  • Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc

  • No NSFW content

  • No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc

Community stats

  • 4.5K

    Monthly active users

  • 11K

    Posts

  • 126K

    Comments