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.

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?

  • A2PKXG@feddit.deEnglish
    6713·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • UlrikHD@programming.dev
      377·
      1 year ago

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

      • Hyperi0n@lemmy.filmEnglish
        2810·
        1 year ago

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

        • mineapple@feddit.de
          16·
          1 year ago

          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

      • Caveman@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
          3·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • Caveman@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            Exactly, I prefer gas and oil to coal any day but that’s only because the “better than coal” bar is incredibly low.

      • A2PKXG@feddit.deEnglish
        52·
        1 year ago

        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

    • soviettaters@lemm.ee
      13·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • A2PKXG@feddit.deEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.