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I don't know how any German in their right mind can continue supporting coal (especially lignite) even if you were to ignore all the fancy carbon emission calcu
by heipei 6y ago
I don't know how any German in their right mind can continue supporting coal (especially lignite) even if you were to ignore all the fancy carbon emission calculations. Lignite is won using strip-mining here, and by here I mean in the most populous state of Germany between the major Ruhr area and Düsseldorf/Cologne, all major population centers. From where I live, I have to drive straight through these mines whenever I want to go to either city, and the experience is surreal. There's a brand new three-lane highway and then open pits, hundreds of meters deep, for miles and miles in either direction, nothing else. It defies the imagination: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/media/Datei:Tagebau_Garzweiler_Panorama_2005.jpg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/...
- Scoundreller 6y agoQuickest and most straightforward would be to convert those coal plants to natural gas. But that gas has to come from somewhere, and I don’t think they like knowing that “somewhere” is Russia.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TwoHeadedBeast 6y agoI love the way you say it so casually. In the grand scheme of things you are of course right, but I reckon converting a coal plant to gas is a non-trivial undertaking.
- Scoundreller 6y agoIt's a lot quicker than nuclear. Dunno if it's cheaper to just raze the coal plant and build a natural gas one somewhere. I'll assume any hydro opportunities are tapped out. Conservation is already big in Germany. Wind and solar can only go so far. And natural gas would provide better peaking capacity to balance it out.
- stubish 6y agoThe article discusses the switch of a major plant in the UK to compressed wood pellets, sourced from the US. I would think that Germany (and most of Europe) would have a good climate for wood pellet production.
- goatsi 6y agoIronically Germany removed a significant amount of forest to create those open pit coal mines.
- MauranKilom 6y agoI'd be curious what the dimensions here are. Surely a few km squares of strip mines isn't going to make a dent in the forested area? I mean, yeah, it's slightly ironic, but is it not irrelevant?
- alecmg 6y agoare they for real? Wood is so inefficient as fuel that shipping it over anything more than 500km (number taken out of my behind, but it is in the ballpark) takes more energy than is contained in it. The only reason to do so is to end up with high value in "biofuels" category. Just for show.
- stubish 6y agoNot wood, compressed wood pellets. Energy density seems to be between 50-80% of coal. And remember that fuel is only part of the total cost, especially if the formulas include health costs, pollution or carbon emissions.
- brohee 6y agoWell there is the hope than soon enough, that methane is made from atmospheric CO2, water and renewable energy. That would be pretty awesome as the infrastructure to store and move methane is already there.
- barney54 6y agoI have this hope too, but it’s really energy intensive right now. I also have hope for renewable hydrogen, but we have a lot of research to do to reduce costs.
- tomr_stargazer 6y agoThis image was shocking. Thank you for sharing. I feel like Treebeard, from the Lord of the Rings, coming across Saruman’s destruction of Isengard.
- logicprog 6y agoI was always a man after Saruman's own heart.... But seriously, I do agree that's not aesthetically pleasing.
- jcheng 6y agoLook at the size of those excavators--the bulldozer in the lower left of the image looks like a forgotten child's toy by comparison! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler_surface_mine#/media/File:Garzweiler_Tagebau-1230.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler_surface_mine#/media...
- dmoy 6y agoThat is bagger288, it weighs over 10Gg and it's like 100m tall or something
- TwoHeadedBeast 6y agoI love the metric system and all that, but perhaps 10,000 tonnes might be a better way of expressing the mass of the digger.
- eeh 6y agoYes. Also, tonne is accepted for use in SI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#Non-SI_units_accepted_for_use_with_SI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#...
- Someone 6y agoWhat’s more, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator has the same photo, and says “Note the 90-ton CAT front loader at lower left for size comparison” ⇒ chances are a normal-sized bulldozer is half the height of that one.
- ip26 6y agoI don't think anti-nuclear activists intend to support coal. They just don't consider what should replace the nuclear plants they wish to shutter.
- mrpopo 6y agoMost do, they want to replace them with nothing, e.g. reduce electricity usage. And that may be a hard thing to swallow, but reducing energy usage is the only realistic pathway towards a <2deg world goal.
- hatboat 6y agoPerhaps you didn't mean it in a literal sense, however you and I have a very different opinion on the term realistic. I believe a deus ex machina type carbon capture solution is a far more likely scenario than getting industrialised nations, let alone emerging ones, to actually reduce their energy usage.
- mrpopo 6y agoGood point, I meant "realistic" as the only technologically plausible scenario. Is it realistic from a human point of view, I don't know. I see what you mean, but even if a magical carbon capture solution was invented, it would take several decades for it to be implemented on a sufficient scale - given that the current emissions don't increase even faster!! I can't consider it as part of any "likely" scenario. Also, emerging nations don't really need policies to reduce their own energy usage, as long as most of their own energy usage is linked to the production chain of industrialized nations, it will decrease by itself.
- renaudg 6y agoThat's not the only technologically plausible scenario, we can use nuclear now. It's also way more realistic from a human point of view to have populations accept this rather than a drastic and sudden lifestyle change.
- LockAndLol 6y agoIronically, Germans seem to have bought into the antinuclear frenzy that was sold to them by The Greens. Fukushima was massively overblown by the media and critical thinking went out the window during that time. Now Germany imports nuclear from France, has the biggest investment in green energy with little to show for it, and is clammering onto their belief that nuclear is the bogeyman. It doesn't seem as if many Germans saw further than their nose and fear when they voted against nuclear (and still continue to do so)
- mrlonglong 6y agoIt's an obscenity, defiling woods to make way for strip mining. I wonder once it's all played out whether they will backfill and let new woods grow again.