this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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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?

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[–] A2PKXG@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's about density. Renewables Are great, but not on terms of value add per square foot. The coal under the wind mill is worth orders of magnitude more than the windmill.

And, it's not as bad as it sounds. In general, the number of windmills keeps increasing.

[–] UlrikHD@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you care about energy density, nuclear is the best solution, not coal. I guess Germans don't care though

[–] A2PKXG@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't say density is the paramount parameter. Also, once you optimize one drawback, it generally gets less important.

I just wanted to put the image into context, and show that it isn't a big step backwards, just sideways perhaps. Or in other words, a sigle wind farm isn't relevant, the sum is

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

Mining more coal is extremely relevant though.