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Comment by heipei | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how any German in their right mind can continue supporting coal (especially lignite) even if you were to ignore all the fancy carbon emission calculations. Lignite is won using strip-mining here, and by here I mean in the most populous state of Germany between the major Ruhr area and Düsseldorf/Cologne, all major population centers. From where I live, I have to drive straight through these mines whenever I want to go to either city, and the experience is surreal. There's a brand new three-lane highway and then open pits, hundreds of meters deep, for miles and miles in either direction, nothing else. It defies the imagination: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinisches_Braunkohlerevier#/...

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Look at the size of those excavators--the bulldozer in the lower left of the image looks like a forgotten child's toy by comparison! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler_surface_mine#/media...

That is bagger288, it weighs over 10Gg and it's like 100m tall or something

I love the metric system and all that, but perhaps 10,000 tonnes might be a better way of expressing the mass of the digger.

Yes. Also, tonne is accepted for use in SI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#...

What’s more, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator has the same photo, and says “Note the 90-ton CAT front loader at lower left for size comparison”

⇒ chances are a normal-sized bulldozer is half the height of that one.

I don't think anti-nuclear activists intend to support coal. They just don't consider what should replace the nuclear plants they wish to shutter.

Most do, they want to replace them with nothing, e.g. reduce electricity usage. And that may be a hard thing to swallow, but reducing energy usage is the only realistic pathway towards a <2deg world goal.

Perhaps you didn't mean it in a literal sense, however you and I have a very different opinion on the term realistic.

I believe a deus ex machina type carbon capture solution is a far more likely scenario than getting industrialised nations, let alone emerging ones, to actually reduce their energy usage.

Good point, I meant "realistic" as the only technologically plausible scenario. Is it realistic from a human point of view, I don't know.

I see what you mean, but even if a magical carbon capture solution was invented, it would take several decades for it to be implemented on a sufficient scale - given that the current emissions don't increase even faster!! I can't consider it as part of any "likely" scenario.

Also, emerging nations don't really need policies to reduce their own energy usage, as long as most of their own energy usage is linked to the production chain of industrialized nations, it will decrease by itself.

That's not the only technologically plausible scenario, we can use nuclear now. It's also way more realistic from a human point of view to have populations accept this rather than a drastic and sudden lifestyle change.

"using nuclear now" is part of the scenario. Any technology that has brought more efficient, less co2-intensive energy thus far has been used to increase the energy usage at a limited impact, instead of decreasing the impact. Only a policy focused on reducing (or at the very least, stopping the increase) energy usage can have positive final results.

À significant part of the population accepted a drastic and sudden lifestyle change over the last few months. Suddenly remote work and visio conferences are acceptable alternatives to driving 2tons of metal through 30km of asphalt 2x a day. Change is possible.

I think your second paragraph is misplaced. It's my belief that people "accepted a drastic and sudden lifestyle change over the last few months" precisely because it was advertised as a temporary measure.

We're already seeing large numbers of people reject the "stay at home" narrative , simply because they want to, rather than it being driven by improving conditions.

Using this as evidence to suggest that people will adjust to a "new normal" is arguing against your point.

I see what you mean, and I don't think it's gonna be easy either, I don't have false hopes.

Technically though, being locked down is more restrictive than forcing people to move in small electric cars or e-bikes. Just like remote work has jumped up in the lead few months, if proper measures are taken and enforced, demand for bike /rail infrastructures will increase immediately.

People can adapt. How many will resist to change, is the question.

Expecting industrialized countries to reduce energy usage immediately by double digits to reach the climate change goal is everything but a realistic pathway.

In practical terms that means years of Covid19-style lockdown.

We don't have time to wait for a breakthrough in battery storage or carbon recapture. We have a solution now and it's nuclear power. It's a bit late for starting a nuclear programme now, but countries with current a nuclear power capacity (including Germany) should absolutely delay or cancel phasing it out until climate change is solved.

If these anti-nuclear activists live in coal-burning countries, and they protest nuclear power until it shuts down, and they do not protest coal power until it shuts down, then for all practical purposes, they are supporting coal.

In Germany they do protest coal power. 100% renewables is the goal.

All renewables except hydro (which Germany doesn't have the geography for) are intermittent.

It's impossible to go 100% renewables unless there's a breakthrough in battery storage.

By the time that happens, it will be too late for climate change. That's why phasing out nuclear without having any other solid low carbon plan was irresponsible.

Hopefully if not 100%, 99% with some coal burning in emergency. Would that work?

Biogas is a renewable. And contributes 5% to Germanys energy load, at baseload capability, still being made more and more flexible. You may not like it but it is definitely there. Hydro by the way also destroys vast stretches of land and creates rivers that are poor in aquatic life. Nuclear plants also heat up local water ways. In Heidelberg, we had the local river Neckar freeze for the first time in 40 years after the nuclear plant upstream shut down.

At this point, nobody that is serious is talking about 100% renewables. As is 100% nuclear which has similar problems of being inflexible. However, not all of this has to be battery storage, having a power full, europe-wide grid is equally important. Without that already now when they are still allowed, nuclear plants have shut down at times voluntarily because there was no demand. Phasing out nuclear may not have been the smartest of all moves, but its still far from the top ten of most stupid moves done in the german energy strategy. And especially not in the top ten of the most stupid moves of the conservative party.

It's a common canard to say that batteries are the only storage technology that could be used.

Long term storage is better handled with hydrogen. Using batteries and hydrogen at plausible (or even conservative) costs, one can get to a 100% renewable (PV + wind) grid more cheaply than one also using new nuclear power plants.

Quickest and most straightforward would be to convert those coal plants to natural gas.

But that gas has to come from somewhere, and I don’t think they like knowing that “somewhere” is Russia.

Well there is the hope than soon enough, that methane is made from atmospheric CO2, water and renewable energy. That would be pretty awesome as the infrastructure to store and move methane is already there.

I have this hope too, but it’s really energy intensive right now. I also have hope for renewable hydrogen, but we have a lot of research to do to reduce costs.

I love the way you say it so casually. In the grand scheme of things you are of course right, but I reckon converting a coal plant to gas is a non-trivial undertaking.

It's a lot quicker than nuclear. Dunno if it's cheaper to just raze the coal plant and build a natural gas one somewhere.

I'll assume any hydro opportunities are tapped out. Conservation is already big in Germany.

Wind and solar can only go so far. And natural gas would provide better peaking capacity to balance it out.

The article discusses the switch of a major plant in the UK to compressed wood pellets, sourced from the US. I would think that Germany (and most of Europe) would have a good climate for wood pellet production.

Ironically Germany removed a significant amount of forest to create those open pit coal mines.

I'd be curious what the dimensions here are. Surely a few km squares of strip mines isn't going to make a dent in the forested area?

I mean, yeah, it's slightly ironic, but is it not irrelevant?

are they for real? Wood is so inefficient as fuel that shipping it over anything more than 500km (number taken out of my behind, but it is in the ballpark) takes more energy than is contained in it.

The only reason to do so is to end up with high value in "biofuels" category. Just for show.

Not wood, compressed wood pellets. Energy density seems to be between 50-80% of coal. And remember that fuel is only part of the total cost, especially if the formulas include health costs, pollution or carbon emissions.

This image was shocking. Thank you for sharing. I feel like Treebeard, from the Lord of the Rings, coming across Saruman’s destruction of Isengard.

I was always a man after Saruman's own heart....

But seriously, I do agree that's not aesthetically pleasing.

It's an obscenity, defiling woods to make way for strip mining. I wonder once it's all played out whether they will backfill and let new woods grow again.

Ironically, Germans seem to have bought into the antinuclear frenzy that was sold to them by The Greens. Fukushima was massively overblown by the media and critical thinking went out the window during that time.

Now Germany imports nuclear from France, has the biggest investment in green energy with little to show for it, and is clammering onto their belief that nuclear is the bogeyman.

It doesn't seem as if many Germans saw further than their nose and fear when they voted against nuclear (and still continue to do so)

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