[HN Gopher] Germany Is Dismantling a Wind Farm to Make Way for a...
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Germany Is Dismantling a Wind Farm to Make Way for a Coal Mine
Author : mikece
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-10-26 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oilprice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oilprice.com)
| Mortiffer wrote:
| Overblown title. -Its not the government but a private energy
| company
|
| -The turbine is 20+ years old and was scheduled to be
| decommissioned at this time.
|
| "A spokesperson for Energiekontor, which built and runs the rest
| of the windfarm, said a time limit to its operational permit
| meant it expected to have to dismantle the five remaining
| turbines by the end of 2023"
|
| "Rebuilding the turbines to make way for the expanding mine was
| part of the original agreement that allowed the windfarm to be
| constructed in 2001, he added, and not a result of a recent
| change of German energy policy"
| elvin_d wrote:
| Yet gov banned nuclear energy; now it's becoming ridiculous.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Didn't they change this policy with the current energy
| crisis?
| netzwerke wrote:
| growt wrote:
| They also wanted to clear a whole forest for that mine. After
| lots of protest it looks like at least parts of it may be
| preserved. That forest will most likely do more good for the
| climate than five wind mills.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_Forest
| perihelions wrote:
| This seems to be the same lignite mine ("Garzweiler") from this
| other story. Its expansion's also destroying an entire registered
| village, with a population of around 90.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/world/europe/germany-coal... (
| _" Germany's New Hunger for Coal Dooms a Tiny Village"_)
|
| You can see a wind farm in the background (maybe it's the same
| one?)
|
| edit: I believe it's the same one. Wikipedia has a map what's
| going on: the expansion is labelled "Garzweiller II - 2045". The
| village "Lutzerath" is within in boundaries, and there's a
| "Keyenberg" just north of it. So the _Times '_ photograph's
| angles would seem reasonable. (The OP doesn't name the wind farm,
| but the linked Guardian article identifies it as a "Keyenberg").
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler_surface_mine#/media...
| (map)
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagebau_Garzweiler#/media/Date...
| (aerial view)
| perrygeo wrote:
| > prioritization of energy security over clean energy in Europe's
| biggest economy
|
| Exactly. This is a market signal that coal is far from over. As a
| global resource, coal is ubiquitous. We have existing tech and
| infrastructure to burn it. (Unlike the more valuable natural gas
| and petrol, which are in the hands of a few producers and prone
| to erratic leadership and price fluctuations.)
|
| Many regions across the world have access to coal deposits of
| various quality, why would they not use them? Because coal is
| "bad for the environment"? Mkay.
|
| Coal is a convenient and nearby energy source. It's quite obvious
| that affluent Europe is turning to coal as quickly as possible,
| abandoning or diluting its green-energy rhetoric. We'll burn coal
| and someone else will deal with pollution, climate change, etc.
| legitster wrote:
| Well, I think more specifically, it shows how foolhardy it was
| to cut back on oil and gas development _while coal was still
| actively used_.
|
| In the last 10 years, the US went so hard on oil and gas
| exploitation that coal is basically dead _just from market
| forces_. And the irony is that by burning more natural gas the
| US is now doing better on climate than most of Europe.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> why would they not use them? Because coal is "bad for the
| environment"? Mkay._
|
| Because burning coal is literally killing us slowly. Try
| breathing in a city that burns coal and tell me how you feel
| after a few weeks.
| perrygeo wrote:
| Yet Germany is still implementing pro-coal policies. Not
| saying it's right, just that it is.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| They have a huge manufacturing industry to feed and no
| energy, what else could they do to stay in business?
|
| So now the greens and their voters will be breathing in
| coal soot all winter because that's "way better" than the
| zero emissions nuclear energy. /s
|
| If this isn't bitter sweet irony, I don't know what is.
| Rhedox wrote:
| So we should just ignore the climate crisis?
| perrygeo wrote:
| No, we should not!
|
| But also we should not ignore the local economic incentives
| that will arise due to an energy crunch. When gas and liquid
| fossil fuels become more expensive, local stores of coal
| become relatively more valuable as an energy source.
| legitster wrote:
| I read something crazy about how Germany has enough peak renewals
| capacity to provide something like 150% of their energy needs.
| But it is just not sunny or windy enough so they have one of the
| most overbuilt renewables grid for the least amount of return.
| fencepost wrote:
| So they built a wind farm on the presumably undesirable land
| around a coal mine, and now they're dismantling (moving?) one or
| more turbines to open space for more mining. This overall feels
| really minor.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's not important per se, but it's a perfect microcosm of
| contemporary German energy policy.
|
| Eliminate the clean energy sources, put up a facade of green
| power which is then bulldozed to facilitate the dirty coal
| baseload power they now completely rely on.
| munk-a wrote:
| The heart of the issue in Germany right now is that the Green
| Party is absolutely dogmatically opposed to anything having
| to do with nuclear - they're trading out good clean energy
| sources for an increased reliance on natural resources
| because of deeply rooted and fundamentally wrong belief that
| nuclear is not and can never be a clean energy source.
| chess_buster wrote:
| The heart of the issue in Germany right now is that the
| conservatives (coal) and the social democrats (gas) had
| sabotaged the switch to renewable energies during the last
| decade - which was otherwise well on it's way.
|
| This entire discussion about nuclear is just a propaganda
| trick by the fossil fuel industry, which knows that nuclear
| can't be build in time. So people will rely on fossil fuels
| longer because they wait for nuclear while renewables and
| storage are presented as unattractive.
|
| Just like Elon did with his hyperloop adventure to sabotage
| high speed rail.
| dathinab wrote:
| not sure why you are down voted it pretty much sumes the
| situation up
|
| Nuclear makes _financially_ no sense, only undoing the
| decision for a earlier shutdown done after fukushima
| makes sense. But building nuclear power plants takes at
| least decade a so it's not even an option to consider for
| short term handling of shortages in the next years and
| nuclear power was only ever cheap because of it being
| highly subvention.
|
| It also makes geo strategically no sense as it's a sigle
| point of failure and a rather catastrophic point of
| failure, too.
|
| Germany had a budding promising solar and wind industry
| which was basically killed of by politicians from CDU and
| SPD. Worse it's more then obvious that the politicians
| behind it have tight connections to the coal and gas
| industry to a point you could call it corrupt.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> the conservatives (coal) and the social democrats
| (gas) had sabotaged the switch to renewable energies
| during the last decade - which was otherwise well on it's
| way._
|
| Why did they do that?
| tormeh wrote:
| I think whether we should build new nuclear plants is a
| question that can be discussed between reasonable people.
| On the other hand, shutting down nuclear plants while
| there are still fossil fuel plants in operation seems
| ill-advised to me.
| dathinab wrote:
| Note that most nuclear power plants are so old that they
| _need_ to be shut down or they will become a risk.
|
| After Fukushima the shutdown of some of them was pulled
| up by a small amount of years, undoing that decision does
| make sense and should be done (and somewhat had been done
| in a roundabout way where the one side can pretend they
| didn't do it and the other side can complain they didn't
| do it but should it matter its basically as if the did
| it).
|
| The problem is that they use the situation as an excuse
| to push other things which are neither necessary nor
| sane.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > This entire discussion about nuclear is just a
| propaganda trick by the fossil fuel industry, which knows
| that nuclear can't be build in time
|
| All you have to do is not turn them off, man. Or
| recommission the ones that were turned off a year ago.
| This isn't a conspiracy.
| AlmostAnyone wrote:
| Oh please. There's no "time" until when nuclear must be
| built or something fails. And it's slow only because of
| the anti-nuclear sentiment. It's very much possible to
| build it quickly - just look across the border.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Look where? Even China takes 10 years to build a nuclear
| plant.
| munk-a wrote:
| If every decade we say "Welp, we can't start building
| nuclear plants now because they won't be done for a
| decade" then it'll never happen. That long startup time
| has been the ongoing boogieman against nuclear since the
| 90's and it is certainly a real cost - but we can't stop-
| gap our way to a solution forever. Building out more coal
| power today while investing in nuclear is fine - it's not
| fine to just accept that if we can't do it in five years
| it's not worth doing.
| netzwerke wrote:
| josefx wrote:
| They have been dismantling entire towns in that area starting
| from 2006[1] to keep the coal plants in the area supplied. It
| would probably be less dramatic if it was just a targeted
| attack on a random wind farm.
|
| [1] https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/rwe-darf-grundstuecke-
| von-la...
| SevenNation wrote:
| TFA links to another article with more details - including
| images. It notes that there's more at stake than just wind/coal:
|
| > The population from several municipalities in the area west of
| Cologne had to be relocated due to the Grazweiler mine expansion.
| In addition to the location of the wind farm, RWE is taking an
| area in and around the small town of Lutzerath. It will be
| completely evicted and demolished.
|
| https://balkangreenenergynews.com/wind-farm-in-germany-is-be...
|
| This is some next-level desperation for lignite.
| simonblack wrote:
| It's usually a bit easier to shift a Wind Mill than to shift a
| coal mine.
| uri4 wrote:
| And what are Germans supposed to do? Freeze to death? If wind
| farm would provide enough energy, this would not be necessary!
| tomlockwood wrote:
| Anyone who's been to Germany will immediately know that building
| _anything_ in Germany may require dismantling a wind farm - they
| 're everywhere.
| Xylakant wrote:
| As someone living in germany, that's just wrong.
| growt wrote:
| Only in the north. In the south, Bavaria, you need to keep so
| much space between a wind farm and the nearest house that it's
| impossible to build one (and that's not really an
| exaggeration).
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(page generated 2022-10-26 23:01 UTC)