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?
Germany, are you on the drugs?
Coal-aine all through those nostrils.
Hwhat they need is clean burning propane and propane accessories.
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
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.
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.
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
What conspiracy? Sounds like just savage profit maximization.
It’ll be fine, they can just buy nuclear power from France and Sweden.
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.
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.
Man, talk about bad optics, though!
I agree
If you care about emissions, this is probably one of the single worst things you can do.
China bad
city of Chinabad, capital of the union territory of Chinawar
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.wsj.com/articles/germany-coal-energy-electricity-renewables-4700b442
Your first graph shows data up to 2022.
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?
upped coal energy production
In fact thats simply not true
Onshore wind is pretty much the cheapest energy source.
One on those wind turbines can provide about 16.000 households with energy. This coal thing is RWE pushing for rights to tap more fossil resources in Germany. Way to go boomers
I don’t think any of what you’ve said there is true? By my estimation, and based on numbers from USGS.gov, given the average household energy use of 893 kWh per month, and the Keyenberg-Holzweiler wind farm’s total capacity of 10 MW (each turbine was only 1.3 MW) which translates to 3 GWh per month, the entire wind farm powered less than 3400 homes. To say that each turbine powered 16,000 households (and thus the entire farm powers 128,000) is off by nearly two orders of magnitude.
Furthermore, RWE says they have 7.2 GW of wind turbines under construction, which if true you’ll note is hundreds of times more power generation than the wind farm they’re tearing down, and definitely not a sign of a company that’s trying to get more fossil fuels. This coal mine they’re expanding is apparently the last bit of coal they’ll be allowed to dig up, and their ability to do so upon decommissioning of the wind farm was negotiated 20 years ago. This is not a recent decision, nor is it a reversal of the general trend to build up wind power and cycle down coal.
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 so you mean most arguments against nuclear energy are that bad too? Thank you for realizing!
Oh gosh, thank you.
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The tile is dangerously misleading. OP, please…
It’s the title of the article.
This should be all that’s needed to invalidate the comment you’re replying to, but it seems people are dumb.
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.
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.
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!”
Maybe they should support more
nazis, sanctions against other fuel resources and further terrorist attacks against peaceful infrastructure by their so called 
“allies”.Stop trivialising fascism.
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
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?
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.
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.
The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-National_Party_of_Ukraine
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.
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
Have you gone to an optometrist lately. It’s a Wolfsangel.
Here, another swastika. Notice the three hooks pointing counter-clockwise?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Leopards come with iron crosses by default, it’s the fucking signet of the fucking Bundeswehr. This is a Bundeswehr tank. These are three Bundeswehr tanks.
Cossack crosses are very similar.
It’s not just iron crosses, he’s thinking of the balkenkreuzes that are being painted on tanks. The symbol Germany stopped using after WWII.
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?
https://lemm.ee/comment/3033256
I had the same dire thought, but this comment really made me take a breath.
I don’t think we’ve ever really tried to address it in the first place
Well that’s not true. Of course many people, organizations, and countries have done many things over the years.
I’m not excusing the bad actions or inactions discussed here, though.
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 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.
the force is strong with you
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 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.
they’re on fire!
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 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.
I think this headline is misleading.
A better headline might read: “Coal found beneath wind farm. Turbines dismantled to make room for mining operation.”
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.
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 it’s there and you want a steady supply of cheap electricity, that’s why.
And thus, climate change.
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.
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I… I dont think that really helped make the title misleading
i don’t think that’s any better
I originally read it as “Germany says ‘Fuck wind as an alternative energy source’ and begins reverting back to coal”, so I figured I’d clarify in case anyone end thought the same thing.
Doesn’t seem like this article indicates that Germans is giving up on alternative energy.
Edit: corrected dumb spelling mistake.
*wind (whoops)
Yup, haha. Fixed it.
Ah well, we know what you meant 👍
No but it does clearly show prioritization when the 2 conflict, which is the point of contention (as well as using coal at all, if you give a shit about our planetary environment)
Well wind is abundant and you can get it most places. You can only get coal in places where there’s coal.
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