I think this headline is misleading.

A better headline might read: “Coal found beneath wind farm. Turbines dismantled to make room for mining operation.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?

The value is simply more densely packed in the coal under the wind farm than in the surface area of the wind farm.

The tile is dangerously misleading. OP, please...

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.

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.

Germany, are you on the drugs?

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?

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.

This is infowars Level dumb and misleading

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?