Germany begins dismantling wind farm for coal
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?
https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157364Open linkView original on lemmy.ml529
Comments169
I think this headline is misleading.
A better headline might read: “Coal found beneath wind farm. Turbines dismantled to make room for mining operation.”
Still, its lignite, they should cease all mining operations.
Lignite is the worst coal, most polluting and least energy dense afaik, why would you bother mining it
Because they get subsidies from the govt bc they employ a whole region and are a super big energy company. They need to be dismantled.
Because it's there and you want a steady supply of cheap electricity, that's why.
And thus, climate change.
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.. I dont think that really helped make the title misleading
Delete this InfoWars-level bs misinformation meant to smear clean energy.
One small privately owned wind farm is being disassembled, this is not a general new policy or anything signalling a shift away from clean energy.
Oh gosh, thank you.
Oh so you mean most arguments against nuclear energy are that bad too? Thank you for realizing!
Ban straws! (even though disabled people need them and they create negligible pollution)
Replace your car with an electric one! (even though it still works fine and will end up in landfill, never mind the environmental cost of producing the new one, or the source of the electricity it uses)
Reduce your carbon footprint! (even though its a term we invented ourselves to shift responsibility to you, while we fly our private jets around creating more pollution than you ever could in 10 lifetimes)
Recycle! (even though 90% of it ends up in landfill anyway because we don't want to pay to actually recycle it)
All equates to
Look the other way while we continue to rape the planet and blame it on you!!!
Never forget - capitalists (and the governments they're co-dependent on) only want more money, they don't car about you or me or the planet, only about themsleves and the numbers in their accounts, and they will never willingly stop doing whatever it takes to make more.
Oh, quit this noise. In the same countries where electric cars are becoming common, wind/water/sun-produced energy is also on the rise. Electric cars decouple the energy used from the means of production in ways that gasoline will never have, and the potential outweighs the temporary conditions of power generation in socially backward areas like Darfur and America.
You are literally commenting on an article where one of those countries has shut down a wind farm to go back to miming coal (never mind that my point still stand regardless because renewables are still just a fraction of electricity production, or that it is the wealthy people buying the electric cars who contribute more emissions than the poorest 50% of the population, but good to see the greenwashing has worked so well on you), so which of us is actually making noise, and which is addressing the problems we face?
Might be a good idea for you to read the article
Do you believe every headline you read on the internet? Looks like it. This isn’t „Germany end all wind farms“, the people who wrote that headline want you to think that. Don’t be such an easy mark.
The title, paired with an expensive paywall and the fact that the quote below is the only part visible for free would certainly suggest that this comment is true.
Here's the un-paywalled article intro:
"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.
One wind turbine has already been dismantled, with a further seven scheduled for removal to excavate an additional 15m to 20m tonnes of so-called 'brown' coal, the most polluting energy source."
I think this article from last year is relevant to this story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfarm-coalmine-keyenberg-turbines-climate
What I’m saying is RWE is a privately owned company. The headline says „Germany begins…“ which is objectively untrue.
It is trying to suggest that Germany passed a decree to disassemble all windfarms. Yet the opposite is true.
I agree, that's what I'm saying. I used "this" ambiguously, I just realized. I edited "this" to "this comment", and added another clarifying sentence before the quote.
Here's an excerpt from the older article which isn't paywalled, that I linked in my comment (before the edit):
"Constructed more than 20 years ago, the turbines at the small Keyenberg wind park are less powerful than modern equivalents, with each producing about 1MW of energy per hour at a wind speed of 15 metres per second, roughly a sixth of the output of a more efficient state of the art turbine.
Since windfarms in Germany are no longer eligible for subsidies after 20 years in operation, the park would probably have been “repowered” with new technology or wound down even if it were not for the nearby mine.
Nonetheless, North-Rhine Westphalia’s ministry for economic and energy affairs on Monday urged RWE to abort its plans to dismantle the windfarm.
“In the current situation, all potential for the use of renewable energy should be exhausted as much as possible and existing turbines should be in operation for as long as possible,” a spokesperson said."
Got ya
Electric cars contribute less emissions than ICE cars even if the grid's electricity supply is entirely coming from coal. Of course cars in general are a much worse solution to transport than really any form of public transportation, but that's no reason to spread pro-ICE car propaganda.
While I partly agree with your argument at the end of your comment, I think your examples are really unfitting.
Only single-use plastic straws are banned. There is also an exemption for straws that are necessary for medical reasons. The needs of disabled people are included in the exemption. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2021-003536-ASW_EN.html
If people buy a new car, the old one (if still functional) typically enters the second-hand market, not the landfill. There is no reason why this would be different if the new car is an electric vehicle.
The carbon footprint is a perfectly fine concept on its own, the problem is just that some people shit on it with their private jets, which are a legitimate concern. Some people also argue that "most of the pollution is done by corporations, not individuals", completely ignoring the fact that these corporations only do it while producing goods for the people. That does not mean that we can just blame the people for it, but everybody has the responsibility to vote for policies that keep the corporations in check.
Recycling is really bad in some countries, but works pretty well in others. For example in Germany 56% of plastic waste is recycled, 44% burned. 90% of paper is recycled. https://www.quarks.de/umwelt/muell/das-solltest-du-ueber-recycling-wissen/#l%C3%B6sung4
We've made electric powered airplane jet turbines. If the rich want private jets, we should require those to be EVs. I don't give a shit that the tech is untested, and neither do they judging by that "submarine."
The problem is we are only talking about a small fraction of the trash. >90% of waste is industrial waste, of that a third is just from Construction/Demolition.
Consumers can recycle everything, but it won't make more than a 10% impact. We need to start forcing industry to recycle and we can start with concrete. 8% of all global emissions are from concrete production, that's not even accounting the energy to haul it around. We have the ability today to use concrete to make down cycled products on site (road base, filler, non structural blocks, etc) eliminating transportation and other impacts. But few even consider it, companies and customers don't want to wait the extra day that it takes, and it's not always profitable either.
I doubt your numbers are factual. Depending on the industry, you'll have very specific, non mixed waste materials, which would be way easier to recycle than mixed trash from households.
I just had to do a project on this for work and almost if not all of those numbers most likely came from the EPA's site from the studies they reference. Other sources, including international sources are similar, I have no reason to doubt the veracity or the figures.
When rereading your comment I get the impression you think I am saying only 10% of industrial waste is recycled. That is not that statement, the statement is simply 90% of waste in landfill is industrial.
Do you think cars are immortal, and are just passed on from owner to owner for all eternity?
Only East German ones. Then the pigs eat some rotten parts off of them, and the remainder is reassembled into fewer cars. The circle of life. The last people on this planet will still be driving a Trabi.
No? Nobody thinks that?
My comment was just a response to the following:
...which for some reason suggests that the introduction of electric cars leads to premature scrapping of existing cars - which is bullshit.
Cuban cars are
That's a lot of words to say "I lick boot".
But just to address my pet peeve (mostly because I can copy pasta my own comment, and no I'm not going to edit out the "ableist" because even if you don't mean t, advocating and making excuses for the straw ban is ableist)
There are many reasons people can't use different alternatives.
Never mind that to deny access to a literal lifeline for the sake of 0.003% of the plastics in the ocean (literally a drop in an ocean) because it makes you feel better and requires zero effort or sacrifice (from you), instead of actually acting to resolve the problem (like being anti-capitalist rather than just trying to apply band aids to its symptoms) is not only gross and ableist, but also a colossal counterproductive waste of time.
As for medical exemptions - disabled people shouldn't need to ask for basic accessibility, nor should they have to disclose personal medical information to get it, but now that ableists like you have forced this situation to boost your own egos, they do, and are often denied, because wait staff are not medically trained, and are often abelists like you (or have bosses that would fire them for "handing out straws willy nilly" if they even have straws available which now many places don't), so they get refused and called liars and accused of destroying the environment.
Never mind that expecting people to always have their own accessibility aids, rather than have them freely available creates an inaccessible society.
Which is exactly what ableists like you are fighting for.
I was exclusively talking about the EU ban, not about some random US cities' bans (This is a thread about Germany after all). None of your points really apply to the EU ban.
It does not ban the distribution (you can still legally buy leftover stock - my local cinema seems to have a century's worth of supply), just the first-time sale of newly produced non-medical single-use plastic straws.
The "medical exemption" is not on an individual basis, but an exemption for a production line of straws. Everybody can buy the straws afterwards. The EU ban is not cutting a "lifeline" for disabled people.
The links you provided talk about bans by local city councils in the USA, which have their own (apparantly stupid) rules.
A new EV breaks even with a used car in less than a decade. It does not matter if it is getting its energy from coal, it still will emit less carbon within a decade.
90% of plastic recycling. That is thanks to the oil companies who saw backlash against the ridiculous amount of plastic in the 70s and decided to invent a resin code whose symbol mimicked the recycling symbol. Recycling centers were flooded with a ton of plastic which they did not have infrastructure to actually recycle. China took it for a couple decades and then it became unprofitable for them. Basically only resin codes 1 and 2 are recyclable. But most people think all of it is. Absolutely recycle metals. If your city has recycling pickup and you are not recycling stuff like aluminum, you kind of suck.
I'm from Sweden, we're among the best in the world at recycling. We have closed all our landfills and even import combustible trash to burn for energy (we clean the fumes extremely well).
Every time I see a discussion about trash anywhere in the world I get sad that people are so uninformed about what's possible.
One Swedish company, Swedish Plastic Recycling, is currently building a recycling plant that will be able to handle ALL of the country's plastic waste and automatically recycle almost all of the kinds of plastic there are.
This is even profitable if done right.
Sources upon request.
I read somewhere that this is false and all of them are recyclable. Don't quote me on it though.
I think you can technically recycle probably almost any plastic, perhaps almost any material in general. It's just a question of if the recycling process is affordable and competes in price with just buying the unrecycled version of that plastic. So other plastics besides PET and HDPE I'm sure you can recycle, it's just that the cost is prohibitive.
Technically yes but there has to be the infrastructure to do it. Most cities cannot process them. It's also generally not profitable and does not save much from an emissions standpoint either.
Luckily many people live in democracies where they can simply vote to enact climate policies.
Sadly most people living in those democracies choose to continue enabling climate change.
The reason nothing is being done against climate change isn't corrupt politicians. It's the millions of people voting for them.
Lol, no.
The fault lies with those who built and benefit from the system, not those trapped in it who are merely given the illusion of choice.
Get off your high horse and aim your anger at the right people, otherwise all you are doing is enabling their rigged system.
Your first link is US only, your second link is about a completely seperate issue. You don't need to dismantle capitalism to protect the climate.
In Germany, where I live, the voters could easily vote for the greens "Grüne" and the left "Linke".
If those two parties had a majority in government, we'd have a climate friendly system in no time.
But they don't. We had a conservative government for 16 years. Now we have a center government, which sadly includes the small government / free market party "FDP", blocking all significant progress.
No systemic oppression stops people from voting Left/Greens. But they never did, and never will.
There's now an uprise of the far right party "AfD" in Germany, to the point it's becoming one of the major parties.
In Germany people have the choice readily available to stop actively damaging the climate.
But every couple of years, they freely choose to not do that.
I feel like many left-wing people regularly forget about the billions of people who genuinely do not care to do anything about climate change.
Under capitalism, the capitalist class controls the media, and can use their wealth to control the political class.
A democracy can only make choices so far as it's voters are informed, and when a group controls most sources of information, it can control the democracy as a whole.
You absolutely do. If it was profitable to destroy the envrionment capitalism would do it in a heartbeat. And guess what it IS profitable to destroy the environment, that is why it is happening! You cannot protect the environment under capitalism.
You can limit capitalism without abolishing it.
In Germany people are guaranteed 20/24 paid vacation days. That's not profitable.
That's a limit imposed on capitalism. It can be done and has been done without abolishing capitalism.
That's just one of the thousands of policies that limit capitalism.
You can limit capitalism (as literally every capitalist nation does) without abolishing it.
Enforcing climate friendlyness would be just another limit.
When you try to limit capitalism you get nuclear plants being shut down and coal plants being opened and the environment still being destroyed.
Most people don't have a 'green' option for which they can vote.
-Doug Ford, 2018
-CBC news, 2023
Not that he was a green leaning politician to begin with but this is just another example of blatant lies used by politicians to get elected and totally fuckover their country.
I do not believe the majority of people don't know about the effects of climate change. I believe that the majority of people voting against climate friendly policies simply choose to not think long term.
Someone who votes to continue the status quo is to be blamed for the status quo.
We must elect a Supreme Chancellor to get us through these tough times.
No they can't? If it was as simple as voting for green policies we'd see more of them. The only thing people can do is vote for greenwashed policies that do not impact the bottom line of industry.
I live next to this coal mine and the wind farm is on my monthly Autobahn trip right next to me. Maybe to shed some light on the "why":
The coal mine was scheduled to be mined until 2038. The plan was to extend the mine to the west, the wind farm is to the east of the coal mine. RWE of course has big investments into mining this lignite until the very last possible day. There are problems with extending to the west though: old towns still exist there and the residents would of course love to stay in their homes the family had for generations. To the east, where the wind farm is, there is nothing but fields and some wind turbines. There are about 150 turbines in the wind farm and ~15 of them are standing where the mine is extending to now. Those 15 also were the first to be built for the wind farm and they are nearly at the end of their lifespan, some of them are even deemed structurally unsafe.
Of course it would be better to stop mining the lignite but decades ago the contracts with RWE were made and just forcing a company out of a contract that is worth billions of Euros is extremely bad precedent and would hinder future investions. Buying out the contract to cease mining faster also was not possible, because RWE was unwilling to settle for a reasonable sum of money.
What a beautiful society where companies have more powers than an state...
Ofc theses companies have our futurs in mind, right ?
Capitalism.
They don't have more power - the government was just stupid to give them contracts this longlasting
Thinking of that one us city that sold its parking rights for a century for just millions
Also the many private-partnered public infrastructure projects built in Turkey with billing rights given to the companies that will let Erdoğans friends leech off the public for decades even if he loses political power
They don't have more power than the state. The state could easily legislate any demands they want. Do so though and you end up rapidly like Venezuela. Contacts matter. Unless you think the state should be able to take your house with little to no compensation as well? That is not capitalism. Don't be obtuse.
It's really bad for $$ to do the responsible thing, so we're going to proceed with existential environmental degradation. Because $.
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
Or to have kept your nuclear running and not freaked out after the fukushima disaster...
Just saying
Correct. You can add the vastly underestimated methane emissions of natural gas to that. (They are hard to measure but nobody seems toooo interested)
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
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.
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 😅
Obviously the latter
It's more responsible to stop mining fossil fuels.
Why was the plan to ever extent to the wist if there is a town?
A lot of towns have been dug away for the lignite. The town now not digged away is just one of the few surviving ones. Also a lot of towns have been drowned for water storage lakes and Hydropower. Europe is populated way too densely to do any large infrastructure project without destroying towns in some ways. The residents are compensated with huge amounts of money, but for some they would still rather stay in the homes they have lived in for 50-80 years.
In this case the original plan was to move westwards because that's where the coal lies in the ground. The lignite in the west is enough to keep the power plants running until 2050, the lignite in the east only until 2030. Because the date is now pushed forwards, it's feasible to dig to the east. Also advanced technology plays a role: the original plans destroying the westwards towns were made when there was no technology to efficiently burn the lignite on the east, which is way less dense.
Thanks for your insight.
So, if I'm reading this correctly, this is the Konigshovener Hohe wind farm which is built on the site of the Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine. According to this article, the site was inaugurated in 2015 with 21 Senvion turbines.
The problem is, Senvion went out of business in 2019, and customers have been struggling to support their turbines. Apparently the Senvion design is exceptionally dependent on software access. Siemens and others have stepped in to offer support contracts to Senvion turbines in good working order, but with the opportunity to mine more lignite at the site, maybe RWE felt that it was time to spin down the Senvion turbines.
It seems like there may be many factors in this decision.
We should be using open source solutions for things like energy security. It's not like our civilization can run without energy generation. The control ought to be in the hands of people, not corporations.
Yeah the Senvion situation is an object lesson in the dangers of proprietary systems.
Thanks for providing this context. From what you say it sounds like a bad initial decision from RWE - tieing themselves in to 'wind turbine as a service'doesn't seem sensible.
I'm not sure that's the right wind farm. According to this guardian article, it's actually the Keyenberg wind farm that's being dismantled, a retired site from 2001.
Apparently the site is retired because the operator's permit ends in 2023. Making way eventually for the mine expansion was part of the original deal allowing the land to be used for wind turbines, and so it's not indicative of any change in climate policy from the German government. Additionally the turbines are somewhat outdated, having only a sixth of the power output of a modern one. They would have to tear down and modernise the turbines anyway even if not for the mine.
However from a publicity standpoint it's not an ideal move. Could have given up on the lignite and put new wind turbines in instead, perhaps.
I'm not sure if that is the wind farm. Looking at the article photos, there are a lot of turbines in the area, so there is probably more than one wind farm adjacent to the coal mine. Even with Senvion out of business, it still feels far too early for them to be pulling down turbines - normally they have about 30 years' life in them before they're sold on to another country. However, the article also says they're only pulling down 7 turbines, so even if it is the same wind farm they're not fully dismantling it.
Edit: Actually I think you're right about the site. It looks like it might be these turbines they're pulling down, and I imagine the motorcross site could be included in the project also.
Yeah, but look up the story on the Senvion turbines. Basically, Senvion operators have had to pay big money for service contracts with 3rd parties since Senvion went out of business.
It's about density. Renewables Are great, but not on terms of value add per square foot. The coal under the wind mill is worth orders of magnitude more than the windmill.
And, it's not as bad as it sounds. In general, the number of windmills keeps increasing.
If you care about energy density, nuclear is the best solution, not coal. I guess Germans don't care though
Germans literally shut down all thier nuclear power in favour for coal power.
It was meant to be replaced by renewables but our minister of economics dumped the whole solar and wind turbine industry. Additionally his party made up bullshit rules about a minimum distance for turbines to households, which was apparently 10x of the reasonable distance and which made it very hard to find spots in densely populated Germany. And to this day, the federations with a renewable energy surplus have to pay more for electricity than those who give a shit about renewables. -it is discussed to be changed now but idk
Hard not to believe in a conspiracy there
It'll be fine, they can just buy nuclear power from France and Sweden.
I didn't say density is the paramount parameter. Also, once you optimize one drawback, it generally gets less important.
I just wanted to put the image into context, and show that it isn't a big step backwards, just sideways perhaps. Or in other words, a sigle wind farm isn't relevant, the sum is
Mining more coal is extremely relevant though.
That's true, although I think they decided on coal since it's cheaper financially (not ecologically and healthwise of course).
It would make sense to just simply move them but the fact that they want to burn coal is just weird.
So that means it will not be cheaper in the medium to long term. Since they will have to deal with the burden on their healthcare system, especially among their ageing population. Plus the scummy carbon offset trades that they have to wiggle themselves into.
Exactly, I prefer gas and oil to coal any day but that's only because the "better than coal" bar is incredibly low.
Man, talk about bad optics, though!
I agree
That's an old wind farm that would be due being taken down. Wind turbines have a finite life span, they oscillate slightly and this loosens the ground around the base, so after around 30 years they're taken down. Typically they end up being sold to poorer countries where they're installed on a new base.
The value is simply more densely packed in the coal under the wind farm than in the surface area of the wind farm.
Expanding on this: OP seems to be conflating wind power being cheaper than coal power, with... What? A wind farm being more profitable per unit area than a coal mine?
The tile is dangerously misleading. OP, please...
It's the title of the article.
There is no rule that forces you to copy the real article's name. In this cases you want to make your own title to spark better debate.
This should be all that's needed to invalidate the comment you're replying to, but it seems people are dumb.
Didn't the green party in Germany have power in government right now? And weren't they the same guys who dismantled their nuclear plants?
I'm not very informed on German politics but if the answer to both was yes they should really rename their green party to the coal party.
The greens sadly are forced to form a coalition with the social democrats and the neo-liberals, the latter of which are trying to hold every progress back
Why not step out if the coalition then? Seems better to not be in power if your coalition partners stand against everything your party should stand for.
That happened here when our centrist, nationalist and far-right parties made a coalition. The far-right one was messing everything up so the centrists just went yeet and broke the coalition resulting in their coalition being in the minority.
We still live in reality, you have to be pragmatic. The greens are the second most leftist party in the Bundestag and the most leftist party in the government coalition. Them leaving the coalition would mean the social democrats and neo-libs wouldn't get any majority anymore which would result in a conservative government. We had that the last 16 years, there's a reason why we elected someone different this time.
That's fair thoughI feel like that's a position they could easily use to get actual green policies through. But again I know very little about German politics so that is a purely feels based idea.
They do what they can. In the beginning, all over media this coalition has been praised to have done more for the people in 100 days than the previous government has done in 16 years. Thing is, the yellows are actively trying to sabotage everything the greens put forth. Our green ministry for family and social affairs wanted to pass a "basic child social security"-law, for which they planned to allocate 12 billion euros, like previously agreed upon. The yellows however have control over the ministry for financial affairs, being able to determine which ministry gets how much resources. That's why said law only ended up getting 2.4 billion euros. It was an absolute shitshow.
No. They are this close to legalising weed in Germany. Should be end of this year. After that, whatever.
The original contract with the company RWE was made in the 1990s and included destroying whole towns for the coal mine, which was planned to be in use until 2038.
What we see now is a compromise between RWE, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the federal government to save the remaining towns and close the mine earlier (in 2030). The wind turbines are from 2001 and are nearing the end of their lifecycle.
Why not introduce a coal tax of 1million per ton, no need to modify the contract at all. If they want to pay 1million per ton to mine the coal, RWE is more then welcome to do so. It is their legal right after all.
This would likely end up hurting consumers more than RWE, because the "merit order" pricing system sets electricity prices depending on the production cost of the most expensive unit of electricity that is being consumed at a given time (usually coal). So raising the production cost of coal-based electricity sadly will also raise electricity prices, so long as renewables don't take over a larger share of the market.
I mean of course it would hurt consumer absent government intervention, that is the design of the market system. Socialize costs, privatize the profits. But it doesn't HAVE to be that way if Germany actually wanted to go green.
the force is strong with you
they're on fire!
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.
Additionally those turbines are at the end of their lifespan. They would need to be dismantled and rebuilt anyways, since they became structurally unsafe
Germany, are you on the drugs?
Coal-aine all through those nostrils.
Hwhat they need is clean burning propane and propane accessories.
12ft paywall removed link
What’s the timeline for getting this expansion built? And what’s the lifecycle of the plant? I understand there are energy scarcity concerns, but how is this the most economical option when it’s ~7 years until they’re supposed to phase out coal?
The wind turbines are already at the end of their lifespan and they knew RWE had the license to expand the mine there when the wind turbines where build.
Of course it's economical for RWE, they are not building a new mine. Just continuing their mining operation there for another 7 years.
"We live our life one quarter
mileat a time" - RWE probablyI mean, that's probably actually it. Short term profits are all shareholders care about. We've seen that time and time again where businesses will absolutely mutilate themselves just so shareholders can enjoy a short term price spike. This is just a pump and dump but for the energy industry.
Most likely they have no intention of stopping coal production and will just move the deadline again in 2030 and no one will do anything about it.
That's possible, particularly if different parties are in power at that time. However the article also notes that lignite is becoming less economically viable and may need to be wound up anyway in 2030.
I'm guessing their bracing for winter without Russian oil. Which will hopefully be transitory, but also sort of delays the inevitable. If they can't survive a winter without fossil fuels they need to figure it out quick.
This expansion is the last one although actually many more in the next decades were already approved and contracted, which got renegotiated with the energy companies. But of course this was already mispresented earlier this year when everyone reported on Germany destroying the village of Lützerath for their newly started coal digging when it was actually the last one (with half a dozen more similiar small villages originally scheduled for destruction more than a decade ago). But lobbyists pay to push lies and publications love the clicks for the popular outrage about evil Germans. Who cares for facts, anyway...
Those wind power plants were originally build with the knowledge that they have to be disassembeled in less than a decade again. Also those models proved to be very problematic and the company building them went out of business after only 4 years (since then there was only some auxiliary technical support from other companies).
Counter question: How economical is it to stop digging up coal today when the phase-out is 7 years away. They can either increase the pit or dig deeper. The latter is not only more expensive but also more damaging (pumping groundwater away from the hole etc.).
PS: A decade is also the usual life time of a wind power plant nowadays... After that time the gear boxes and blades need to be replaced and the foundation needs to be checked because of constant micro vibrations... In theory the installation itself could run up to 30 years but the technical development is still moving ahead so fast that replacing the whole thing with a newer and more efficient (also often bigger) model usually makes more sense than replacing parts to keep them running. So for now wind turbines are rather short-lived as their replacements see constant substantial improvements.
I suspect that they have no intention of phasing out coal, or there are certain unrealistic requirements that have to be met before the "agreement" to end coal is enforced. It's just pageantry, Germany has no intention of ending coal dependence.
RWE has no conscience left at all (doubt they ever had one). Coal is scheduled to be faded out by 2030 (recently rescheduled from 2038) and I do wonder if there really was no other option than to demolish those 8 windmills (and the nearby village).
That being said: This is a singular incident caused by long-time contracts of the fading industry. It’s not some paradigm shift in Germany. Coal will be gone soon and new windmills will be build.
Realistically speaking they need to get coal another 5 years. Which means either widening the pit or digging deeper. And the latter is massively more damaging, just for the management of ground water levels needed (also more expensive).
This is infowars Level dumb and misleading
What's misleading? There's coal under these turbines, they're being dismantled to expand the coal mine, ergo they're being torn down for coal
That is not the obvious interpretation, and the headline (and description added by OP) are deliberately written to imply something that's not true.
How is this misleading?
That's not the headline or the description written by the OP lol
It's the text in-between the two.
The text written by the OP is a rhetorical question about what I quoted, not a description. To read it you had to read the quoted text too, or decide to skip it for some reason.
is it just me or have these past few weeks just been one after another of announcements claiming people have given up on climate change? what gives?
I don't think we've ever really tried to address it in the first place
https://lemm.ee/comment/3033256
I had the same dire thought, but this comment really made me take a breath.
What a shame. One step forward, two steps back.
Where's the step forward though? All I see is two steps back. First they close nuclear power plants, then they mine coal because of some weird bureaucracy. What's next? Rebuild nordstream?.. Germany sucks, its leaders suck and its businessmen suck. Spineless profiteering bureaucrats the lot of them. I dunno why aren't there people on the streets trashing up the place.
Yay lets increase pollution production!!!
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.
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.
Oh it's absolutely possible to do it legally in Germany: Land, natural resources and means of productions can be socialised without even having to show that it's for the common good, and compensation wouldn't be what RWE is hoping for as the amount will not only take their interests into account but also that of the public. Article 15 GG.
But that article has never been used and I indeed would very much prefer if the first time it's used it's expropriating landlords in Berlin.
Another interesting approach would be to take Article 14 (2) seriously and demand that RWE buys carbon credits for every single ton of coal they pull out of there. Sure it's their coal noone is disputing that but using it comes with an obligation to not hurt, if not serve, the common good.
You're disregarding Art.15 III GG then. Particularly Art. 15 III s. 2,3 GG (of the German version), which regulate reimbursement in the case of nationalisation. Which, again, make it a fairly difficult thing to do. Especially as we all know that Art. 20a GG, which is the only logical argument to base this all on, is just a way of getting out of actually doing something. Pretty much everyone has agreed that it means nothing except for a vague sense of 'direction'.
As for your last point, that could just as easily be interpreted as the energy they produce being in the service of energy production for the entire country, as well as ensuring that coal miners continue to have a job. If that's not a socially beneficial use of coal reserves, not sure what to tell you. Energy self sufficiency is important.
As for your landlord comment, which honestly is an entirely different matter in and of itself, that basically won't fall under 'land, natural resources or means of production', unless one of those Berlin judges decides to do Berlin things.
EDIT (because I forgot the context of what I was replying to)
None of this even takes into account that what the guy above me wrote was about simply 'shutting down coal' tomorrow. Which is a very different thing from taking public ownership, and then running the business into the ground overnight.
Which is to be equitable between the interest of the owners and society. That is, in a nutshell, below market value.
Yeah no that's not how externalities work. They're creating damage with that coal, even to break even it has to be curbed in some way, much less for them to do good. If you want to mount that defence don't create externalities.
For those big landlords those apartments are means of production of rent. Wouldn't work for smaller investors or even private abodes but we're talking about companies with 2000+ (IIRC) apartments, here.
It's legal if the Government of Germany makes it legal, and as other posters have pointed out, there are already ways that it could be done legally. Stop supporting fossil fuels.
Don't those actually come from the EU?
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."
Bro, the last 3 nuclear power plant in Germany have already been shut down in April... You been to France yet?
Eco fanatics when they read this: "this is info war bullshit!" ; meanwhile the same eco fanatics : "chernobyl is still killing thousands of people and will do for millenia!"
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.
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.
Wow. Thank you!
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 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.
Fair. Very fair.
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
corruptionlobbyism 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.
When you shut down nuclear and start relying more on renewables (which are costly and suck) you end up using more coal. Green politics, FTW!
You fell for misinformation.
This is a small site. The owner of the wind turbines had to phase them out due to them being at the end of their lifespan. As there is coal under them. A deal was stipulated a VERY long time ago where when the wind turbines would have had to be removed, an expansion of a coal mine would be built there at the agreement that it will be dismantled by 2030. We are talking about "multiple years" time ago, before the 2030 deadline.
I commented more on general production of energy in Germany... They did in fact recently shut down nuclear plants and upped coal energy production.
No, they didn't and you are still parroting lies.
The actual reality of replacing nuclear and reducing coal with renewables.
Also the historic low of fossil fuels after nuclear shutdown (those old reactors not able to react well to changes in supply/demand actually got already existing renewables shut down at times and indirectly increased fossil fuel use slightly...)
Your first graph shows data up to 2022. The second one is regarding Europe.
Meanwhile:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/energy-crisis-fuels-coal-comeback-germany-2022-12-16/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-22/germany-returns-to-coal-as-energy-security-trumps-climate-goals#xj4y7vzkg
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-coal-energy-electricity-renewables-4700b442
A does every single link you posted as a reply...
But sure... How about one from June 2023?
Or Germany's coal use of the last 8 years until mid-July 2023?
In fact thats simply not true
Really?
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/energy-crisis-fuels-coal-comeback-germany-2022-12-16/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-22/germany-returns-to-coal-as-energy-security-trumps-climate-goals#xj4y7vzkg
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-coal-energy-electricity-renewables-4700b442
The "costly" renewables that are actually so dirt cheap that nothing else can really compete and so lobbyists pay a lot of money to push a lie? Those renewables?
Onshore wind is pretty much the cheapest energy source.
Ah, Germany, please never change. Those are the guys who claim nuclear is not clean enough.
Edit: Thanks guys, I can finally feel like Jesus - downvoted because I was telling the truth.
Who needs nuclear, we have all this clean lignite.