this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
456 points (100.0% liked)

World News

1041 readers
26 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] UlrikHD@programming.dev 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If you care about energy density, nuclear is the best solution, not coal. I guess Germans don't care though

[–] Hyperi0n@lemmy.film 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Germans literally shut down all thier nuclear power in favour for coal power.

[–] mineapple@feddit.de 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] mineapple@feddit.de 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hard not to believe in a conspiracy there

[–] jarfil 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

What conspiracy? Sounds like just savage profit maximization.

[–] A2PKXG@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Mining more coal is extremely relevant though.