this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's really bad for $$ to do the responsible thing, so we're going to proceed with existential environmental degradation. Because $.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] Crashumbc 6 points 1 year ago

Or to have kept your nuclear running and not freaked out after the fukushima disaster...

Just saying

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Correct. You can add the vastly underestimated methane emissions of natural gas to that. (They are hard to measure but nobody seems toooo interested)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Germany is still going to use the same amount of coal whether this runs or not, they'd just import it from another country or have another mine go faster if there's one that still can

The way to reduce coal is to increase low carbon sources of energy and to reduce consumption

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nope. Dont import and scarsity will drive prices up and people use less. It's pretty simple really.

We need to keep all fossil fuels in the ground. The way we do this is reduce energy usage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 😅

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Obviously the latter

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's more responsible to stop mining fossil fuels.