Germany is losing the war on cheap energy. The headlines are everywhere. “Wind farm in Germany is being dismantled to expand coal mine.” The center-right has embraced it as a poster child for failure, and why not. What’s more iconic than pulling down useless wind machines to mine more coal?
Related: It Isn’t Easy Being Green – Lessons From Germany in The Winter
Wind turbines near the Garzweiler open pit mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, run by German energy giant RWE, is being removed to make way for more lignite exploitation.
Those wind machines are unreliable, intermittent, not green to make, you can’t recycle them, and they kill innumerable bats and birds, including protected species. And while coal may not always be pretty (like in China, for example), it is energy-dense, cheap, and abundant, and you could filter emissions without all the negative BS that comes from propping up the windmill fantasy and for a lot less money (coal companies would pay instead of you)
Yes, prop up. One of the points I am not seeing as often as I’d like in the coverage of the “wind farm comes down to make way for coal mine” story is the root cause of this change of heart.
Germany is still all-in on so-called green energy. They are committed to using it to free them from their dependence on Gas from Russia. So, why pull down the avian sausage mills when the goal is more of them, not less?
The turbines were in operation since 2001, and government subsidies have expired. Energiekontor and wpd, which is also active in the Balkans, operate the wind farm.
The subsidies ended: three words that will send a chill down what passes for the spine of every wind and solar investor, green-energy business or activist (if ad when they differ) and progressives all over the world. The “free” money train has been derailed. Whatever shall we do?
In the US, Biden and Congressional Dems print a few trillion (screw inflation) and hand it out to friends and family. The myth is expensive, but the only plan it will advance is the laundering of tax dollars to the Dem donor class, who will share the bounty in the form of campaign contributions to candidates and super PACs (think back to the green waste fraud and abuse during Obama’s).
Even in the make-believe world of climatism, nothing good will come of it.
And that might be true in Germany on a typical day, but they face the likelihood of outages over the winter, so letting a coal mine expand makes some sense. This is Europe. The people may be descended from the peasant class, but when they “protest,” it’s a large and messy business.
Related: Green Party Vice Chancellor – Germany is Going to have to Burn More Coal.
When the cold comes, and the lights go out, telling the peeps we are expanding a coal mine will buy a lot more patience than, “hey, your tax dollars are still propping up a wind farm, and that is the reason why you are sitting in the cold dark.” The latter lends itself to people warming themselves in front of piles of burning tires or the flames consuming the local magistrate’s office (not an insurrection if you have the right motives).
They take their protests seriously, like BLM serious. Panty-twisted elites enjoy screwing over the rank and file but only as long as they believe their groundlings will stay in the pit and not try to join them in the good seats.
The end of subsidies is as good a reason as any to let the coal mine expand, an act you’d be hard-pressed to find an American progressive embrace. We can’t even get a pipeline built, and they could care less if we freeze to death. They’ll blame it on someone else and print more money to throw at the problem: too many of us still breathing air and above ground, but they’ll call it something else.
As for Germany, they are being practical, but let’s not get too excited about it. The government is committed to the green-energy lie, and only the people of Germany can convince them to do something different. Them and the whole of the EU.
Maybe a few very cold winters will get the job done?
It’s sad if it has to come to that.
