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?
There are a lot of things which in hindsight were better than coal. But when the decision was made to dig where the wind farm is, there wouldn’t have been any time to build a nuclear power plant anymore
Nuclear was already better than coal 50 years ago… the whole anti-nuclear movement was predicated on the Chernobyl disaster, making “natural gas” and renewables better than nuclear, with a supposed phase-out of natural gas. Coal was always the worst option, both in emissions, and in the impact of open pit mining, when it was already known that deep shaft black coals mines had been getting depleted for decades.
It was highly irresponsible to not renew the nuclear plants before there was at least enough renewables to replace them, and instead increase reliance on natural gas… from Russia from all places. Particularly after Crimea, there should have been a reassessment and a push to fast-track nuclear.
It takes only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant, Crimea was 9 years ago; Germany had plenty of time to prepare itself, instead of investing in increasing NordStream capacity.
It takes only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant, (…)
I agree with most of the comment, but this is just an oversimplification. I’m sure that you can build a nuclear power plant in 5 years, if you have the requisite infrastructure, engineers and knowledge. Germany did not have any of those in sufficient amount to build anywhere near enough nuclear reactors between the decision to switch to coal & gas in around 2011 and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Even France wouldn’t be capable of that in such a short amount of time.
Had they made that decision 30 years ago, sure, but in such short time? No way.
