
The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest - jfk13
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-48931062
======
twic
> To add insult to injury, the coal that is extracted here is brown coal, also
> known as lignite, which emits particularly high levels of carbon dioxide.

This surprised me, because surely you get one molecule of CO2 per atom of
carbon in the coal, regardless of the kind of coal. But it seems there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my stoichiometry -
lignite has a higher moisture content than other coals, so more of the energy
liberated goes into boiling that water, so there is less energy produced per
unit of carbon, which means more CO2 per unit of energy:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978008100...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081008959000036)

~~~
MR4D
I had a power company as a client once, years ago. They had a plant that
burned lignite. I was new to the industry and asked what that was.

The response they gave me was “it’s like burning dirt.” Man, lignite is nasty
stuff.

Burning freaking dirt. Can’t wait for this stuff to be outlawed.

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jfk13
The scale of the scars on the earth here is pretty staggering:
[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hambach+Forest/@50.89999...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hambach+Forest/@50.8999971,6.1530726,74969m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47bf5c94fc8fe1af:0x34d898611d7c9285!8m2!3d50.9!4d6.4333333)

~~~
roenxi
Impressive, aren't they? The industrial muscle keeping people warm and happy.

I assume Germany has a modern program of mine rehabilitation, so you're only
able to see the parts that are currently part of the active mine. The historic
mine footprint of an old mine is probably twice or thrice what is visible;
much larger but invisible from satellite because it has been rehabilitated.

Eg, the area just north-west of Tagebau Hambach is probably mine rehab; you
can tell because it is a deeper green than the surrounding farmland and if you
look closely the massive contours of the waste emplacement areas might be
visible.

~~~
Kliment
That's correct (I live nearby). What you also don't see was what was in the
way of the mine before it got there. It was populated space, all the towns got
cleared out. Normally when someone blows up thousand-year-old cultural
monuments we call it terrorism, but not when it's RWE (the mine operator)
doing it. The compensation people get is nowhere near proportional to the
damage - they get paid based on a fictional estimate of the value of their
home. And they don't get to choose whether they get evicted or not.

RWE recently bulldozed a centuries-old church and surrounding town. They get
away with it because of a fuckup by local politicians a while back. RWE was
supposed to pay for the right to exploit that land, and local councils agreed
to an offer to pay them in shares instead of in money. Now local council
budgets are dependent on RWE dividends and therefore although technically they
co-own RWE, in practice RWE owns them. The saddest thing is that lignite
mining is not even commercially viable anymore - so these mines only continue
to operate because of state subsidies (federal subsidies, which then partially
end up in local councils via said dividends). The terrorists operating the
mines claim that it's critical to keep them running because of the jobs that
would be lost, but a couple years worth of the subsidy would be sufficient to
pay the entire workforce (around 20k people nationwide work in that industry)
their salaries for life. Meanwhile solar subsidies got cut for being "too
expensive", shrinking that sector by 4x as many jobs. The fuckers now want to
accelerate the pace of extraction because they have to shut down by 2038.

~~~
cipher_system
The jobs at risk are not only those in the coal industry but also the jobs
powered by the coal. You can't run a business without electricity. So if coal
makes up about a third of the power then about a third of the jobs in Germany
could be lost.

Of course coal can and should be replaced by something better but thats gonna
take a while and Germany has chosen to phase out nuclear before coal so this
is a consequence of that decision.

~~~
chokma
Last year Germany exported about 9% of its electricity. So the country could
reduce their use of lignite (~ 24% of total energy produced) by at least this
amount.

And I think the math is off there - if Germany cuts 24% of its energy
production over a couple of years, energy may become more expensive, driving
away the factories using extreme amounts of electricity[1]. It would not
result in losing a lot of jobs, and may even force some industries to become
much more efficient (thus generating an advantage over competitors).

[1] eg, Aurubis in Hamburg using 1 billion kw/h per year with less than 7000
employees to refine copper

~~~
cipher_system
Sure but then power lines needs to be built from where the power is produced
to where it is used. This is also part of Energiewende but it is not that easy
to just put up high voltage lines through a densely populated democracy. It
could take years or even decades to build a new grid.

Their competitors are also becoming more efficient over time and if you have
no capacity at all in a region no new factories can be built there. High
paying jobs could be replaced by low paying jobs.

Not saying it shouldn't be done but I understand it's a political balancing
act. Ideally a global carbon tax, making it the same for everyone, would help
but i've given up hope on that.

------
VBprogrammer
For someone who has been to Germany the scale and number of windturbines is
amazing. It seems odd that they only account for 14% of their electricity
production. By comparison I can't remember seeing any solar power
infrastructure and yet that accounts for 7%.

~~~
imtringued
I don't know where you got your numbers from. Wind power generated 20% of
electricity in 2018 and 26% in the first half of 2019.

~~~
casefields
AG Energiebilanzen says its 17.3% for 2019.

Source: [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-
energy-c...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-
consumption-and-power-mix-charts)

------
rotorblade
Democracy Now! also covered the protests at the end of 2017 [1].

[1]
[https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/15/special_report_from_...](https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/15/special_report_from_the_occupied_forest)

------
nashashmi
OT but the picture of the gigantic machine is a bagger 288. An engineering
marvel.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288?wprov=sfla1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288?wprov=sfla1)

------
sawaruna
If interested in some footage from protests and the site in general -
[https://twitter.com/JoanieLemercier](https://twitter.com/JoanieLemercier)

------
ntzm
Capitalism will destroy this planet

~~~
Grue3
In case of Germany, it's anti-science anti-nuclear "environmentalists" that
are destroying it. Energy is needed regardless of the economic structure of
society. Now which kind of energy will it be? Germany chose coal and now
they're reaping the consequences.

~~~
adrianN
Nuclear was always less than 15% of Germany's primary power consumption.
Renewables something like 5%. We need to get to 100% carbon neutral. Whether
we have to replace 80 or 100% with wind and solar shouldn't make that much of
a difference.

~~~
someguydave
Nuclear fission is the only non-carbon technology that could realistically get
to 100% supply. Ending its generation in Germany was a mistake.

~~~
adrianN
I agree that it was a mistake, but there are several studies showing how
Germany can switch to ~100% wind+solar.

~~~
someguydave
What do they propose to deal with massive swings in generation and demand?
Hydroelectric pumping? Batteries?

~~~
adrianN
Build enough batteries and hydro to last for a few hours to a few days and use
power-to-gas for longer periods of low generation (e.g. winter and no wind).
There is already infrastructure in place for strategic gas reserves. We just
need to build additional gas plants to meet demand when wind and solar are at
production minimums.

~~~
someguydave
But batteries and hydro are extremely expensive at grid-scale. How
economically uncompetitive are you willing to make Germany in exchange for not
using nuclear?

~~~
adrianN
Nuclear is also extremely expensive. Personally I see opportunities in being
an early adopter of technologies that have to become quite popular over the
next few years if we want to prevent catastrophic climate change, but I'm not
enough of an economist to have a strong opinion.

I would also be okay with building some nuclear, put nuclear and renewables
don't go very well together, and I believe it's much harder to build enough
nuclear plants quickly enough to replace all fossil energy consumption than it
is to build enough wind turbines.

------
golergka
> "It's heavy to see how your home just gets destroyed," says Omo. "The
> treehouse that you built and where you lived and where you spent so much
> time. And then you see hundreds and hundreds of cops running through your
> home. It's a heavy thing to see."

I'm astonished by this hypocrisy. Not only have they squatted on someone
else's property, they did it not just to live in a forest, they did it as
activists: with the exact purpose of creating the image of police brutality to
create public backlash and affect the parties involved.

Even if their cause was completely just and good (which is a different
conversation that I'm not prepared to have), they're getting at it by
manipulating the media and purposefully creating the coverage they planned.
This exact destruction was the main purpose of them building these houses, in
this spot, to begin with.

~~~
blablabla123
Actually squatting is legal within its limit. One might also bring the
counterargument that RWE legally squatted other people's properties and
evicted them - while creating immense cost for the tax payers. [1] Not
everybody was so comfortable with moving away.

'The old Immerath is ... demolished for the Garzweiler II opencast mine. Since
2006, the former residents have been partially relocated to the newly formed
village. ... "When I was at the construction site, everything was in ruins.
That was a shock. A man from outside approached me and said why we gave up the
village without a fight. We resisted for years. People should not think wrong.
"' [2]

[1]
[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Frp-
online.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Frwe-und-vattenfall-braunkohle-
kostet-15-milliarden_aid-19710147)

[2]
[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Ftaz.de%2FDorf-
Umsiedlung-fuer-Braunkohletagebau%2F%215494693%2F)

