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?

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]
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    512 years ago

    Maybe they should support more ukkkraine pigmask-off nazis, sanctions against other fuel resources and further terrorist attacks against peaceful infrastructure by their so called amerikkka “allies”.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
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        2 years ago

        the only people trivializing fascism are those who see fascism symbology like the swastika, Black Sun, various nordic runes, etc on the soldiers they’re egging on and go “doesn’t look like anything to me!” while advocating for the double genocide theory

        • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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          2 years ago

          Have you any pictures of Azov with swastika, black sun, or such after they got integrated into the national guard?

          Or is that just a convenient propaganda line to make you support an imperial aggressor fielding tons of fascist militias, itself being a mafia state slowly but surely turning fascist?

          • AcidSmiley [she/her]
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            2 years ago

            Have you any pictures of Azov with swastika, black sun, or such since 2014?

            The Black Sun and Wolfsangel have been right on their fucking shit rag of a flag until last year, you fascist turd.

            JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia, fick dich du kranke Faschosau.

            • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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              12 years ago

              The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.

              JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia

              Yeah I happen to be arguing with another fascism-trivialising hexbear idiot in another thread.

              • Awoo [she/her]
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                2 years ago

                The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.

                The Azov Brigade’s official magazine is titled “Black Sun newspaper” which it produces and distributes to several tens of thousands within the Ukrainian military still uses the black sun, because it’s literally the fucking name of the publication.

                Some but not all of them are available here: https://archive.org/details/black_sun/

                Given that this archived collection goes up to 2017, you are full of shit.

                • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  12 years ago

                  Yeah no that’s indefensible and the original editor in chief is nuts (google translate from the Ukrainian wikipedia page):

                  This is an old Ukrainian sign, which means a force aimed at destroying all the old and restoring the new. There is another version of its origin: the black sun is the period of the year when water acquires special life-giving qualities. This usually happened at night, when there was no sun, but since the nutritional properties were always associated only with it, our ancestors nicknamed this time the black sun. There is no hint of hostile ideology here, this is our Ukrainian symbol, which has a sacred meaning.

                  — Mark Melnyk (“Viry”), editor-in-chief of the publication

                  Couldn’t find out when it was discontinued, the azov.press domain certainly is dysfunctional. Azov’s official news feed seems to be here.

                  Could neither find out how official the whole thing was, either, and especially not in the crucial post-incorporation times. They might just have continued to operate independently.

                  Still, though: Is current-day Azov out there doing Nazi things? Ultimately that’s the only question that matters. Of course from the Russian perspective yes it is according to Russian propaganda everyone opposed to Russia (and that includes being opposed to being invaded) is a Nazi.

              • Awoo [she/her]
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                2 years ago

                Oh and I can prove Azov are still distributing this free taster archive of the magazine via nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on. Here is a January 2022 archived page where you can see Azov are still giving away that selection of the magazine for free via their political spinoff the “National Corps”, this is one of several of their party websites: https://web.archive.org/web/20220409062917/https://nackor.org/ru/z-dnem-sobornosti-ukraini

                Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/ukraine-far-right-national-militia-takes-law-into-own-hands-neo-nazi-links

                It is the regiment’s official political wing and has only suspended political activity during wartime.

                • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  12 years ago

                  nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on.

                  nackor.org is a gambling website now it seems. Certainly not a news outlet, certainly not from the outside.

                  Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov

                  Wikipedia. Yes they’re certainly linked the National Corps is the home of Azov’s Nazis.

                  …squinting at things and considering that National Corps ceased activity in 2022 (to go to the front) it doesn’t seem too unlikely that they gave up on nackor.org and the successor to the Black Sun. I guess (really, guess) that it was run by National Corps for the longest time after Azov got integrated.

                  Anyhow are you seeing those election results. I can’t blame Ukrainians for not being too worried about them getting into power.

              • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]
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                2 years ago

                Bruh that’s basically a swastika

                Why carry water for a fascist group just do the lib thing and call them bad apples and move on ffs

                It’s really sus

                • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  2 years ago

                  Panzergrenadierbattalion 13 of the Bundeswehr (1980-1992, dissolved because cold war over). You’ll find it in more insignia not to mention coat of arms of towns but that one is closest to Azov in the sense that it’s simply a singular Wolfsangel. At least among the ones I could find within 10 seconds of googling.

                  The Wolfsangel is not a Nazi symbol as such. If you want to outlaw everything the Nazis ever used then nothing would be left, including the Antifa flags because they totally did try to appropriate those. They’re getting off on that shit and you seem to be willing to play right into their hands.

            • Adkml [he/him]
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              512 years ago

              Hey rember when they just got those new leopard tanks and some rascal painted a bunch of iron crosses on them, which libs insisted was from obscure world War 1 battalion and not where literally everybody knows the iron cross from, to the point the German government said they weren’t gonna keep giving them weapons if that shit didn’t stop

  • Rikudou_Sage
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • Kalash
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      42 years ago

      Who needs nuclear, we have all this clean lignite.

    • @quicken@aussie.zone
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      232 years ago

      Dig it up locally. Burn into electricity in a neighboring country. A low emissions success story 😥

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        312 years ago

        Germany has been rejecting practical solutions for moving off fossil fuels, such as nuclear. Current government is also pursuing a policy of pretending to reduce emissions through deindustrialization which only moves emissions to other countries since people in Germany still need the goods that were produced. This way Germany can claim to be lowering emissions simply by externalizing them. Finally, we see return to coal which is one of the dirtiest fuels around because wind and solar evidently can’t keep up even with the energy demands.

  • @FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • @napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.de
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      2 years ago

      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.

      • @PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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        82 years ago

        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.

        • @rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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          22 years ago

          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.

          • @PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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            12 years ago

            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.

    • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
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      102 years ago

      The Green parties are simply a way in which the capitalist superstructure ensures the security of the base by ensuring electoral support of the pearl-clutching petit-bourgeois.

    • Sinister [none/use name, comrade/them]B
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      102 years ago

      The green party ruled my state for decades. Their commitment to “green” politics was always very surface-level and they catered to the erewhon customer type of voting base.

    • @duviobaz@lemmy.world
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      112 years ago

      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

      • @FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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        12 years ago

        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.

        • @duviobaz@lemmy.world
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          32 years ago

          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.

          • @FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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            12 years ago

            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.

            • @duviobaz@lemmy.world
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              12 years ago

              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.

  • @A2PKXG@feddit.de
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    672 years ago

    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.

        • @mineapple@feddit.de
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          162 years ago

          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

      • @A2PKXG@feddit.de
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        52 years ago

        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

      • Caveman
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        32 years ago

        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.

        • @dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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          32 years ago

          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.

          • Caveman
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            22 years ago

            Exactly, I prefer gas and oil to coal any day but that’s only because the “better than coal” bar is incredibly low.

    • @soviettaters@lemm.ee
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      12 years ago

      Yeah, wind works fine in places like Texas (where I’m from) because there are thousands of square miles full of just turbines. The land is flat and expensive, essentially the opposite of Germany. Something kind of related that I found out while googling about this is that Texas is 1.9 times as large as Germany.

      • @A2PKXG@feddit.de
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        12 years ago

        Isn’t cheap land good for anything that involves land use?

        We have the north sea, quite windy and shallow enough to build tall wind Mills.

        Currently the power rating is up to 10 MW and the blades are over 100m (300ft) long.

  • Onihikage
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    2 years ago

    The linked article is two sentences long and offers no context or understanding of the situation. It might as well be a headline. The only useful part of it is the photo of the wind farm being dismantled, which also shows a completely different wind farm in the background, on the other side of the expanding mine, that is not being dismantled:

    But you wouldn’t realize that just from reading the article.

    My understanding based on this much better article from Recharge News is that the following information is critical to understanding this decision:

    First, the wind farm being dismantled is the Keyenberg-Holzweiler wind farm, which consists of 8 turbines built over 20 years ago in 2001, totaling just over 10 MW of capacity (1.3 MW each). Recently constructed wind turbine power outputs are estimated at a 42% capacity factor, which is to say they generate about 42% of the peak power they’re rated for because wind isn’t always blowing; this would likely be lower for the older wind farm, but we’ll use the current amount. The 10 MW wind farm would have made 3 GWh per month, which based on an average of 893 kWh per month per household is enough to power… 3386 homes [edit: corrected my horrible math]. Not nothing, but not a lot by modern standards considering the Chinese just built a single wind turbine that outdoes the entire Keyenberg-Holzweiler wind farm by half and then some.

    Furthermore, as the turbines were built 20 years ago, they were always going to be decommissioned around this time, and that’s documented in the agreements back then under which the turbines were built. RWE continues to construct many turbines elsewhere, claiming 7.2 GW of turbines are currently under construction, 720 times the rated output of the Keyenberg-Holzweiler wind farm. They’ve also built 200 MW of wind capacity in that locality, likely what we see in the background of that image.

    If RWE were to replace the turbines that are being decommissioned, the coal underneath them will be worthless by the time the new turbines are decommissioned, and it’s supposedly the last of the coal they will be allowed to dig up. They’ve clearly made huge investments in building out wind power, so this represents the last vestiges of cleaning up their act.

    I could not advocate more strongly that coal should be left in the ground, but this all comes down to corporate investors who care more about money than the environment, and agreements made 20 years ago, as well as the fact Germany and much of the EU is still desperate for any source of energy to maintain their current level of industry right now while they’re still building out carbon-free generation to fully replace coal/oil/gas. Reality is complex, and to me this isn’t as big of an insult to clean energy advocacy as the microscopic EUObserver “article” could lead one to think it is.

    Coal is still dying in the West, so let’s not go thinking this one last gasp means that trend has changed. If we’re lucky, and demand for coal falls quickly enough, they might even scrap this mine before they’ve gotten everything out of it. Keep pushing!

    • @schulzi@feddit.de
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      42 years ago

      Bro, the last 3 nuclear power plant in Germany have already been shut down in April… You been to France yet?

      • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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        42 years ago

        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.”

          • 7bicycles [he/him]
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            42 years ago

            Yeah, little online test about it, too, but in the end even that took years and there isn’t really any feasible way to get what you want other than suing the company

    • @andrai@feddit.de
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      122 years ago

      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.

      • @PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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        22 years ago

        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.

        • DaDragon
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          62 years ago

          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.

          • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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            32 years ago

            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.

            • DaDragon
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              2 years ago

              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.

              • @barsoap@lemm.ee
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                12 years ago

                which regulate reimbursement in the case of nationalisation.

                Which is to be equitable between the interest of the owners and society. That is, in a nutshell, below market value.

                that could just as easily be interpreted as the energy they produce being in the service of energy production for the entire country

                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.

                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’,

                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.

          • @PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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            12 years ago

            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.

    • @Scrof@sopuli.xyz
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      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.

  • IHeartBadCode
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    242 years ago

    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.

    • @DrM@feddit.de
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      132 years ago

      Additionally those turbines are at the end of their lifespan. They would need to be dismantled and rebuilt anyways, since they became structurally unsafe

  • @DrM@feddit.de
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    982 years ago

    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.

    • @library_napper@monyet.cc
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      212 years ago

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

      • 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

        • @library_napper@monyet.cc
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          32 years ago

          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.

      • Firnin
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        42 years ago

        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 😅

      • @DrM@feddit.de
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        92 years ago

        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

          • @DrM@feddit.de
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            22 years ago

            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

            • @jarfil@beehaw.org
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              Nuclear was already better than coal 50 years ago… the whole anti-nuclear movement was predicated on the Chernobyl disaster, making “natural gas” and renewables better than nuclear, with a supposed phase-out of natural gas. Coal was always the worst option, both in emissions, and in the impact of open pit mining, when it was already known that deep shaft black coals mines had been getting depleted for decades.

              It was highly irresponsible to not renew the nuclear plants before there was at least enough renewables to replace them, and instead increase reliance on natural gas… from Russia from all places. Particularly after Crimea, there should have been a reassessment and a push to fast-track nuclear.

              It takes only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant, Crimea was 9 years ago; Germany had plenty of time to prepare itself, instead of investing in increasing NordStream capacity.

              • @HorriblePerson@feddit.nl
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                12 years ago

                It takes only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant, (…)

                I agree with most of the comment, but this is just an oversimplification. I’m sure that you can build a nuclear power plant in 5 years, if you have the requisite infrastructure, engineers and knowledge. Germany did not have any of those in sufficient amount to build anywhere near enough nuclear reactors between the decision to switch to coal & gas in around 2011 and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Even France wouldn’t be capable of that in such a short amount of time.

                Had they made that decision 30 years ago, sure, but in such short time? No way.

                • @jarfil@beehaw.org
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                  infrastructure, engineers and knowledge. Germany did not have any of those in sufficient amount

                  Germany had 17 nuclear power plants in 2011, when they decided to close half of them after Fukushima. Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Last nuclear power plant closed in April 2023. I find it hard to believe that there was not enough expertise to build some new ones in all this time.

                  the decision to switch to coal & gas

                  This is what really rubs me the wrong way: coal should have been phased out before nuclear, not used to replace nuclear.

                  It all seems like a grift and a knee jerk reaction under the guise of “look how green we are”, while actually doing all the opposite.

        • @luk3th3dud3@feddit.de
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          52 years ago

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

      • @DrM@feddit.de
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        2 years ago

        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.

    • TGhost [She/Her]
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      2 years ago

      What a beautiful society where companies have more powers than an state…

      Ofc theses companies have our futurs in mind, right ?

      Capitalism.

      • hh93
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        302 years ago

        They don’t have more power - the government was just stupid to give them contracts this longlasting

        • @Lojcs@lemm.ee
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          2 years ago

          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

      • @Zippy@lemmy.world
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        12 years ago

        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.

  • Tarte
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • Ooops
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      12 years ago

      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).

  • RickRussell_CA
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    812 years ago

    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.

    • @sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      2 years ago

      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.

    • TWeaK
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      2 years ago

      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.

      RWE Garzwiler

      • RickRussell_CA
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        22 years ago

        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.

    • @BilboBargains@lemmy.world
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      142 years ago

      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.

      • RickRussell_CA
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        22 years ago

        Yeah the Senvion situation is an object lesson in the dangers of proprietary systems.

    • @teeps@feddit.uk
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      152 years ago

      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.

  • kim (she/her)
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    132 years ago

    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?

  • emmanuel_car
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    202 years ago

    12ft paywall removed link

    The demolitions are part of a deal brokered last year between Robert Habeck, the Green party’s minister for economy and climate action and Mona Neubaur, who is the economy minister for North Rhine Westphalia, to allow the expansion of the mine.

    In return, RWE had to agree to phase out coal in 2030, eight years before the previous deadline. “It’s a good day for climate protection,” Habeck said at the time.

    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?

    • @andrai@feddit.de
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      132 years ago

      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.

      • @Fosheze@lemmy.world
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        12 years ago

        I 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.

    • @Not_mikey@lemmy.world
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      22 years ago

      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.

    • JJROKCZ
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      32 years ago

      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.

      • TWeaK
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        12 years ago

        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.

    • @PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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      22 years ago

      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.

    • Ooops
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      2 years ago

      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.

  • @bouh@lemmy.world
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    42 years ago

    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!”