
Germany's Giant Windmills Are Unpopular - blast
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-31/germany-s-nationalist-party-has-wind-industry-in-limbo
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linuxhansl
As a German I find that article... uhm... Interesting. I could also just call
bulls*it.

First: With a population of about 2m and as part of former East Germany,
Thüringen is _hardly_ representative of Germany (pop 83m). That's less than
2.5% of the population.

Second: In Bavaria the Green party did quite well (2nd strongest in 2018); and
in Germany as a whole it does too. Edit: In Hessen (Germany's most populous
state) state the Green party was the 2nd strongest as well.

Third: I'm pretty sure windmills are not among the major reasons for the
popularity of the AfD.

~~~
mrpopo
> But in the first half of 2019, only 35 wind turbines were added — an 82%
> drop compared with the first six months of 2018. Last year was bad, too:
> Just 743 turbines were added, compared with 1,792 in 2017.

How do you explain that drop then?

~~~
hannob
Complex bureaucracy, a change in the law a few years ago that's now going into
full force, lack of _political_ support (which is a very different thing than
population support).

Every time surveys are done you get a vast majority (here's a recent one [1])
stating that they support more wind energy.

[1]
[https://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=36393](https://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=36393)

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Escapado
I live in Germany and I am in the camp of those who believe that paying for
pretty clean and sustainable energy source with having a couple of turbines
installed and "ruining" the view of some places is worth it (as long as it is
planned with at least some degree of care). But of course a lot of it is
nimbyism as support for renewables and clean sources or energy is rather high.

~~~
Doxin
And that's even if you believe the view _is_ ruined by windmills. Personally I
don't mind seeing them at all, but there have been protests here against
installing them off the beach. By now that windmill park is complete and all
you can see from the beach is some toothpicks on the horizon on an
exceptionally clear day.

I really wonder what causes this split among people, why do some people not
mind at all and other people mind _so much_ when they are looking at the same
things.

~~~
acomjean
I wondered the same thing. In Massachusetts there were protests that help
scuttle the cape wind project.. Wealthy opponents (Koch/kenedey et al)
litigated it to failure, after raising 40 million to “protect Nantucket sound”

Plus Massachusetts. (generally has trouble getting anything done.)

[1][https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1462962/cape-
wind-r...](https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1462962/cape-wind-requiem-
dream)

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SideburnsOfDoom
Unpopular compared to what? Open-cast coal mines and smokestacks? Nuclear
plants? No electricity?

~~~
thatgerhard
Yeh this whole thing seems like Germans are just unhappy with every solution,
but I have a feeling it's media engine that decides this and not actual
Germans.

~~~
api
My impression is that Germany is like California. They love technology and
certain aspects of high modernity but never want to catch so much as a glimpse
of the industrial infrastructure that makes or powers it. They also have a
similar paradoxical "volkisch" fetish for organic food and natural medicine
along with their high tech cars and computers and phones and techno music.

~~~
xiphias2
As a European citizen who looks at fat American people (and death statistics
for American people) sometimes in disgust/pity I prefer to stay with my
natural food, thank you very much.

As for wind mills I'm all for having many of them.

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tony-allan
For the curious -- German asparagus...

[https://www.hardthof-pfrengle.de/2017/04/05](https://www.hardthof-
pfrengle.de/2017/04/05)

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neonate
[https://outline.com/uZrvnL](https://outline.com/uZrvnL)

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ggm
This article mis-states vox-pop as a broad story. I would have said _"
German's decide they don't want in-fill of current giant windmills with more
giant windmills but overall like clean energy"_ is more like it.

~~~
hcknwscommenter
Bingo! I think you have it exactly right. Sure Germans do, and should, dislike
windmills placed in unfavorable locations solely as a result of distorting tax
credits, policy, and the like. I do too. Any rational person should. That does
not make one anti-windmill. Rather, it makes one anti-idiocy.

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hwj
I live about 2km (1.24 mi) from 4 of such giant windmills. They don't look
bad, but if you open the window on windy evenings you may hear them.

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gok
Not sure I fully buy this op-ed's claims but honestly Germany isn't the ideal
place for on-shore wind anyway. The capacity factor in Germany for wind is
only around 20%. In the US it's more like 35%. So further expansion requires
building a lot more turbines in a much smaller country.

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Grue3
To think that with a bunch of gen 3 nuclear plants Germany could've been
carbon neutral already just like France.

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hootbootscoot
bloomberg has an anti-renewables article at least once a week since, I dunno,
1 year or so?

It's ridiculous. No one hates renewables generally, anywhere, this is largely
a propaganda item being pushed by big oil. Bloomberg should show some
leadership instead.

Cue last weeks study in which offshore wind farm development even in only the
select windiest stretches of global coastline provide over 30 trillion
megawatt hours, aka about 10 trillion more than projected demand for next year
or the year after, I forget which.

Cue Mark Carney, governor of Bank of England saying that the companies that
don't adapt to the climate crisis fast enough will go bankrupt, as it will
cost increasingly more the longer one waits. He also suggested, vis-a-vis the
current state of the global economy and downturn concerns trade war etc, that
this is actually the PERFECT time to invest in Green New Deals everywhere,
lot's of investment, big projects, now, keep that balloon open and use that
momentum to effect the necessary change NOW!

~~~
recursivecaveat
I don't know if you've ever lived in a windmill region, but everybody hates
them if its in their backyard. _I support green energy, but god forbid it
'desecrate' a field within 40km of my property_. Suddenly every rinky-dink
town has a _unique cultural character_ and every backwoods is a _natural
habitat for endangered species_. Nobody can take even a little responsibility
for the problems of society, its always _make somebody else pay for it_.

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fingerlocks
Is the headline a typo, or have we stopped calling these _wind turbines_?

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ZeroGravitas
Kind of weird how anti-climate change-consensus AfD and other right wing
parties are.

German polls suggest that the population is very supportive of the energy
transition, so it seems oddly anti-populist to take such a position.

Which suggests they're probably getting funded by fossil fuel interests and/or
Russia.

~~~
s9w
We are being bled dry by extremely high power prices. Left wing government has
replaced nuclear by coal and opposes our fusion research. But somehow right
wing parties and Russia are the baddies, and any critic is being is being
[dead]ed within seconds. Right.

edit: took about two minutes

~~~
egeozcan
I am, within the boundaries of my understanding, for the nuclear power. So I'm
not very happy that they shut them down, let's just say that. However, I don't
understand how being against wind power helps this situation, at all.

~~~
samus
IMHO, shutting down is not even necessarily the problem. Many of these
reactors are _ancient_ , and the state-of-the-art has moved on. But lessons
were learned and new reactors could take over and sometimes even help solve
issues created by older models.

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afpx
Same in the US. 165 meters tall, loud, and built very close to residential.
And, it’s pretty much just the rural poor (< $8000 / year income) who suffer,
and they see receive economic benefits.

~~~
mikelyons
Are they any louder in Germany than in Britain? It seems that by suffering,
they are just missing the benefit of the quiet rural areas. City dwellers of
most stripes suffer worse noise levels according to my limited research. One
example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKgN2G9d0dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKgN2G9d0dc)

