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?
I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?
The value is simply more densely packed in the coal under the wind farm than in the surface area of the wind farm.
Cmon Germany I wanna root for you so bad because of your pro-consumer laws but blunders like this and the nuke plants keep making it so damn hard.
They’re implemented on the EU level but Germany isn’t exactly unknown for pushing for them. The EP also likes to do it, the commission has more an eye on competition, sometimes those things overlap e.g. pushing train operators to finally implement a unified ticket shop (buying a trip from a single provider, even if the trains are run by different ones, has the consumer benefit that if a train is delayed and you miss a connection you can then take pretty much whatever train to reach your goal. And from the commission’s perspective they want train operators to compete, but not by building walled gardens)
As far as Germany specifically, I think one I heard about ISPs being required to discount customers who fall victim to low bandwidth. In other words, they can’t sell you a 50mb/s contract and then say “sorry, bandwidth is bad here so you will only get 20mb/s.”
The contract for RWE to expand the mine there goes back decades and the wind farm operator knew it would be demolished before they build it. It’s at the end of its life cycle now and had to be demolished one way or another.
German government could either breach their contract with RWE and pay them compensation or allow the destruction of a derelict wind park in exchange of RWE stopping coal extraction 8 years earlier then planned. It’s a job well done by the government.
They are the Government, they can just shut down coal immediately by law. Make all coal extraction immediately illegal, sue RWE for climate destruction, throw the executives in jail. Save the planet.
Is that legal? I’ll tell you the answer, it’s not. They would need to pay massive payouts to RWE for breach of contract. What you’re describing is rule of emotion, not rule of law.
Literally fucking why.
The energy consumption of Germany is hanging by this like geopolitical shoestring. Renewables could make next winter or the winter after mildly affordable for Germans. Yet instead, the German state is expanding this dystopian arm that digs a massive pit in the earth… to burn the most pollutant fuel that we have. Like what? What an incredible act of defiance against the wishes and needs of its people. And that’s coming from an American.
I’ve been schooled as to why this article is a misdirection and propoganda rather than serious need for concern.
I think the problem is that people really don’t like freezing to death in winter when there just happens to not be enough sun or wind. So you need something as a backup. But we’re afraid of nuclear and just happen to have all this coal lying around. That’s the sad why.
Why? Because you all want to hear that lie. That’s the whole reason they tell it. Because you pay in clicks for it. Germany bad always sells no matter how braindead the desinformation being poushed is.
Well if its disinformation, whats the truth?
Edit, since you replied many people have discussed in comments whh this is disinformation. I see now.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Germany is going for a complete coal phase-out by 2030. For this the new government (in office since Dec 2021) renegotiated the already contracted and approved increase of the area coal is digged for, so the last one happened earlier this year. But you have probably heard the story about the viallage of Lützerath “being demolished because stupid Germany started to increase coal digging again” in the media. That’s desinformation because in reality they stopped coal digging there, btw saving half a dozen equally small villages scheduled for destruction more than a decade ago already.
Germany has also shut down it’s remaining nuclear reactors that combined -up to their shutdown- produced the miniscule share of ~2% of electricity. In the same time they build up wind- and solarpower. In fact Germany’s complete nuclear power (and even at it’s peak it was not that much but only looks bigger because electricity demand in the early 1990s was much lower) was replaced with much more capacities in renewable power, so much indeed that they also decreased coal by nearly the same capacity at the same time. Yet, you have probably read dozens of times how “insane Germans think coal is clean energy and shut down all their nuclear to burn more of it”.
Wind turbines run about a decade before gear boxes, blades etc. need to be replaced. The whole thing (with replacements) can probably run 25-30 years, but this is rarely done because the improvements in tech make it more worthwhile to completely replace them with more efficient (and nowadays often bigger) models. With that in mind a company build wind turbines next to the digging site knowing that they will need to disassemble them a decade later again (side note: those particular wind mills were also quite problematic and the company went out of business a few years ago), which is shown in the picture. Again, framing this as dismantling wind for more coal power as negotiated by the German Green party is blatant desinformation.
Long story, short. Lobbyists pay good money to push story of insane Greens destroying the country and nature, too. Lobbyists pay good money to push the story of how it’s all hopeless to try to get rid of coal as big industry countries like Germany are increasing coal instead. And people love to hate on Germany and eat up that bullshit so for publications it’s a double win as this kind of crap also generated clicks like crazy.
For reference: The actual picture…
PS: And you can also see how the propaganda is working as right here in this thread there’s lots of “they are lying about renewables and just plan to continue burning coal forever” and at this point in time I’m not even sure anymore if it’s just the usual paid trolls or the brain-washing really is that successful.
Because the entire economy of that region depends on coal mining and coal miners. You are aware that closing the mine down tomorrow would instantly land a fairly large group of people into poverty because they have no other marketable job skills other than coal mining, right?
That’s not wrong but really just a pretense.
The former government killed 100k jobs in the solar industry when solar power became too cheap for others to compete while whining non-stop about the poor 10k workers in coal mining. They did the same later for wind power and so even now some companies are in trouble as they had to size down so heavily that they can’t even get full use out of the boom in wind power now.
Jobs in coal mining are basically an issue for 2-3 local politicians, for everyone else of that former government it’s corruption lobbyism and jobs as board members and advisors.
As for why they keep increasing the dig site: It’s actually jsut logical. They need coal for another few years and can either increase the area or dig deeper. And the latter is massively more damaging for the environment as it involves a lot of ground water manipulation.
The contract to expand the coal mine was signed a long time ago, it wouldnt be signed now. RWE, who mines the coal there, would have to be compensated if they werent allowed to mine there.
The compensation would probably be so high that its cheaper to just build renewable energy elsewhere, and the wind turbines are at the end of their lifespan anyway.
I just hope that we dont get a right wing government anytime soon that gives out the next stupid contract to mine even more coal there.
Because, in the end we have more coal underground than we ever need or should use, its not a question of finding coal, but instead of how or if we should mine it.
I think this headline is misleading.
A better headline might read: “Coal found beneath wind farm. Turbines dismantled to make room for mining operation.”
I originally read it as “Germany says ‘Fuck wind as an alternative energy source’ and begins reverting back to coal”, so I figured I’d clarify in case anyone end thought the same thing.
Doesn’t seem like this article indicates that Germans is giving up on alternative energy.
Edit: corrected dumb spelling mistake.
No but it does clearly show prioritization when the 2 conflict, which is the point of contention (as well as using coal at all, if you give a shit about our planetary environment)
Lignite is the worst coal, most polluting and least energy dense afaik, why would you bother mining it
Because it’s there and you want a steady supply of cheap electricity, that’s why.
Shouldn’t they build a new wind farm though? Why aren’t the eco fanatics protesting against this infamy?
They are litteraly replacing a wind farm with a coal mine!
If the turbines are still good, they can just be moved, although it looks like they’re EOL anyway, so I’m guessing they’ll just be scrapped.
Won’t make a huge difference to the general trend in the German energy mix, which is towards more renewables + importing French nuclear energy.
I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?
This is one of those in general vs in particular things.
In general, yes coal is way more expensive versus renewable energy. In this particular instance, they’re just expanding the site, all of the really expensive stuff like logistics and transportation are already paid.
This is the same reason just keeping old nuclear plants running is cheaper than building a new one. Each industry has expensive parts and cheap parts. If you’re doing something that only expands the cheap parts then you’ll be able to beat out competitors.
