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?
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.
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.
If you care about energy density, nuclear is the best solution, not coal. I guess Germans don’t care though
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
Man, talk about bad optics, though!
I agree
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.
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.
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
Maybe nuclear could’ve been better than coal?
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
Correct. You can add the vastly underestimated methane emissions of natural gas to that. (They are hard to measure but nobody seems toooo interested)
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 😅
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.
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.
Bro, the last 3 nuclear power plant in Germany have already been shut down in April… You been to France yet?
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.
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.
upped coal energy production
In fact thats simply not true
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.
The contract to expand the coal mine was signed a long time ago, it wouldnt be signed now. RWE, who mines the coal there, would have to be compensated if they werent allowed to mine there.
The compensation would probably be so high that its cheaper to just build renewable energy elsewhere, and the wind turbines are at the end of their lifespan anyway.
I just hope that we dont get a right wing government anytime soon that gives out the next stupid contract to mine even more coal there.
Because, in the end we have more coal underground than we ever need or should use, its not a question of finding coal, but instead of how or if we should mine it.
I think this headline is misleading.
A better headline might read: “Coal found beneath wind farm. Turbines dismantled to make room for mining operation.”
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.
Yay lets increase pollution production!!!
