Where do they plan to put them...NW? They give out about Bavaria and south but most estimates I've seen only support northern sites as being actually worthwhile. The biggest wind related fallacy apart from farting in public is putting windmills where theres not enough bluster. Could be wasteful and a little late from the German greens imo given recent events.
The south has almost a third of the viable area for wind power generation. The only reason why the expansion there is slow are ideological opposition and NIMBYism.
Depends on whether you include the costs of funding a totalitarian state's war efforts in your calculation. In other words: Usually decades, faster with rising energy prices, even faster when accounting for externalities.
Finally. And yes it will be a good answer to NIMBYsts: "if you don't like to see windmills on the horizon, next year they will be standing right in the middle of your village".
What I'd really like to yell at those people: "if you don't like to see windmills on the horizon, how about a coal mine instead?" - maybe a windmill is the lesser evil after all...
"Germany’s economy and climate ministry will present a package of measures to speed up the expansion of wind energy, documents reviewed by Reuters showed on Wednesday, as the country turns to renewables to cut its use of Russian fossil fuels."
What a brilliant take. Use fossil fuels to make wind turbines? No, let's continue using them to make some other thing, not specified here.
Refusing to build green energy because doing so consumes natural resources does not stop those resources from being exploited. It leads to more exploitation.
Vaclav Smil told me personally on a conference in Switzerland, Zürich (he was presenting at the european food service summit), that he does not believe in climate change. That's it for me.
> If states fail to meet the targets by certain deadlines, the government will wave regulations on the minimum distance between residential areas and wind farms.
That sounds like a way to make lots of people hate wind farms.
It's an incentive to accept wind farms in places where they can go within the regulations. Essentially it's a threat - if people reject wind farms far away from them, then they might end up with wind farms much closer.
The incentive here is for them (or their local governments whom they lobbied on the minimum distance rules, which are quite excessive in some cases) to look for alternatives if they insist on NIMBY.
It will only escalate if they don't meet goals and it is telegraphed in advance.
People who hate wind farms have set minimum distance rules that rule out almost all places in their state. The new rules aligns incentives in two ways:
- if resistance is too high on projects that meet the minimum distance rules then you instead get projects even closer to home
- if minimum distance rules are set too restrictive they get waved entirely, so you are better off setting reasonable rules in the first place
We know about how much wind power we need and how much space is needed for that.
Theoretically the federal government can define the regulation around the necessary distance of wind farms to where people live. However, the federal government gave that power to the states – which lead to some states creating very restrictive distance regulations, effectively making it impossible to build many wind farms and making it impossible to meet their targets that are needed for the energy transformation.
This is the federal government giving the states fair warning that those targets are non-negotiable and that it’s the federal government who has the power to make overriding distance regulations. But, obviously, the preference is still for the states to figure this out on their own, depending on their own unique circumstances.
If the federal government were to step in it‘s not as though the would build wind farms in people‘s backyards just to spite the states. They would then just define distance rules that would allow them to meet the wind farm targets. That‘s all.
Wind is great. But consider: at 1.5MW generation capacity max per generator, it takes 600+ of them to produce 1GW. Other commercial generation plants produce many GW (30? 50?)
Wind power may be a red-herring as a generation option for our civilization as a whole.
Sorry if this is disappointing to readers. But unless you want 10,000 wind towers in your county I don't know what other option to suggest.
No facility can produce 30 GW. The new Vogtle reactors are 1.1 GW each, which is pretty typical for nuclear or fossil fuel plant. Steam turbines over 2 GW don't exist afaik.
Also, the median new wind turbine in the US is over 3 MW now.
Eho needs cheap and reliable energy (you know from where as in last half century) or safe a bit more expensive one (wink wink France) when you can build useless wind farms and room whole landscape! Germany FTW, the suicide way, inflation FTW, people can handle anything to die for green energy. Can't wait for more exits from this union detached from reality.
I wonder why nuclear fanboys always attack low-carbon, low-capital renewables with a ferocity that they spare incumbent and well-financed, carbon-spewing fossil fuel power providers. i don't know if we could ever figure out "cui bono"!
Europe has enough wind potential to power all of the world, strictly energy speaking. Combined with solar, storage, a bit of biomass, and robust transmission, wind is a reasonable generator to go big on (and balances well with solar generation). Green ammonia is probably also a great place to invest to store energy longer term and for transport, considering Europe spinning up planning and building LNG terminals recently.
[+] [-] xor99|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cedilla|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpodgursky|3 years ago|reply
This isn't going to make up for decommissioning their nuclear plants, and it's not going to wean them off of Russian gas and oil before... 2050 or so.
I really don't think German leadership is serious about the energy dependence crisis they are in, and feel-good measures aren't going to cut it.
[+] [-] pydry|3 years ago|reply
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
("not reducing CO2 emissions fast enough", because nuclear)
While nobody really cares that Poland (along with so many other countries) is doing this:
https://aleasoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/20190724-ale...
("80% coal now and forever? meh, who cares?")
It's almost as if Germany proving the model that you can reduce CO2 while turning off nuclear plants that is attracting flak.
[+] [-] Ericson2314|3 years ago|reply
We'll see which!
[+] [-] testmasterflex|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Y-bar|3 years ago|reply
See "Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis"
[+] [-] uniqueuid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foepys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anovikov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TonyTrapp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|3 years ago|reply
After all we all must make small sacrifices for green energy right?
[+] [-] mountainb|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] seltzered_|3 years ago|reply
A reminder that Vaclav Smil has called wind turbines 'the perfect embodiment of fossil fuels' : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk&t=2033s (Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019)
[+] [-] stefan_|3 years ago|reply
Refusing to build green energy because doing so consumes natural resources does not stop those resources from being exploited. It leads to more exploitation.
[+] [-] mklarmann|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ManuelKiessling|3 years ago|reply
I chuckled.
[+] [-] squarefoot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tomp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schmeckleberg|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ovi256|3 years ago|reply
That sounds like a way to make lots of people hate wind farms.
[+] [-] onion2k|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the8472|3 years ago|reply
It will only escalate if they don't meet goals and it is telegraphed in advance.
[+] [-] wongarsu|3 years ago|reply
- if resistance is too high on projects that meet the minimum distance rules then you instead get projects even closer to home
- if minimum distance rules are set too restrictive they get waved entirely, so you are better off setting reasonable rules in the first place
[+] [-] arrrg|3 years ago|reply
Theoretically the federal government can define the regulation around the necessary distance of wind farms to where people live. However, the federal government gave that power to the states – which lead to some states creating very restrictive distance regulations, effectively making it impossible to build many wind farms and making it impossible to meet their targets that are needed for the energy transformation.
This is the federal government giving the states fair warning that those targets are non-negotiable and that it’s the federal government who has the power to make overriding distance regulations. But, obviously, the preference is still for the states to figure this out on their own, depending on their own unique circumstances.
If the federal government were to step in it‘s not as though the would build wind farms in people‘s backyards just to spite the states. They would then just define distance rules that would allow them to meet the wind farm targets. That‘s all.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|3 years ago|reply
Wind power may be a red-herring as a generation option for our civilization as a whole.
Sorry if this is disappointing to readers. But unless you want 10,000 wind towers in your county I don't know what other option to suggest.
[+] [-] scarab92|3 years ago|reply
Also, the median new wind turbine in the US is over 3 MW now.
[+] [-] z3t4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Markoff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schmeckleberg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RektBoy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] red_trumpet|3 years ago|reply