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?

  • DrM@feddit.de
    441·
    1 year ago

    I live next to this coal mine and the wind farm is on my monthly Autobahn trip right next to me. Maybe to shed some light on the “why”:

    The coal mine was scheduled to be mined until 2038. The plan was to extend the mine to the west, the wind farm is to the east of the coal mine. RWE of course has big investments into mining this lignite until the very last possible day. There are problems with extending to the west though: old towns still exist there and the residents would of course love to stay in their homes the family had for generations. To the east, where the wind farm is, there is nothing but fields and some wind turbines. There are about 150 turbines in the wind farm and ~15 of them are standing where the mine is extending to now. Those 15 also were the first to be built for the wind farm and they are nearly at the end of their lifespan, some of them are even deemed structurally unsafe.

    Of course it would be better to stop mining the lignite but decades ago the contracts with RWE were made and just forcing a company out of a contract that is worth billions of Euros is extremely bad precedent and would hinder future investions. Buying out the contract to cease mining faster also was not possible, because RWE was unwilling to settle for a reasonable sum of money.

    • TGhost [She/Her]@lemmy.ml
      221·
      1 year ago

      What a beautiful society where companies have more powers than an state…

      Ofc theses companies have our futurs in mind, right ?

      Capitalism.

      • hh93@lemm.ee
        192·
        1 year ago

        They don’t have more power - the government was just stupid to give them contracts this longlasting

        • Lojcs@lemm.ee
          4·
          1 year ago

          Thinking of that one us city that sold its parking rights for a century for just millions

          Also the many private-partnered public infrastructure projects built in Turkey with billing rights given to the companies that will let Erdoğans friends leech off the public for decades even if he loses political power

    • library_napper@monyet.cc
      4·
      1 year ago

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

      • Firnin@feddit.de
        0·
        1 year ago

        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 😅