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Germany is first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear

Rostocker said:
Have you ever seen a german coal mining area?

tagebau_inden_dj.jpg


I think you have no clue what you talk about. It means total collapse of local habitats which can never be replaced.
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Of course the environment can be restored. We have been mining and restoring the environment in Alaska for decades. Usibelli coal mine is just outside of Denali National Park, and most visitors to the park aren't even aware its exists. The environment around the park has been completely restored.

Usibelli Coal Mine - Restoration

Rostocker said:
Beside that its not the government but the people who demand a stop of this. In Germany the people storm coal mines and block them. The people are no longer willing to see their home being destroyed.
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Apparently the people don't want to heat or power their homes any longer either.

Rostocker said:
Beside that, coal is highly radioactive, enriched by radium and the ash actually is more radioactive than some nuclear waste. The river Spree more and more got poisoned through coal mining.
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The fly ash produced by burning coal is ~10 times more radioactive than normal coal, but it is not anywhere nearly as radioactive as nuclear waste. Radiation levels in the soil around coal powered power plants will be between 50% and 200% more radiation than the soil taken from around nuclear facilities. The fly ash can be contained within the facility and disposed of properly, like any other radioactive material. It does not need to be dispersed, but that requires government regulation.

Like I said, coal power plants can be made to produce power cleanly.
 
Glitch said:
Of course the environment can be restored. We have been mining and restoring the environment in Alaska for decades. Usibelli coal mine is just outside of Denali National Park, and most visitors to the park aren't even aware its exists. The environment around the park has been completely restored.

Usibelli Coal Mine - Restoration

Apparently the people don't want to heat or power their homes any longer either.

The fly ash produced by burning coal is ~10 times more radioactive than normal coal, but it is not anywhere nearly as radioactive as nuclear waste. Radiation levels in the soil around coal powered power plants will be between 50% and 200% more radiation than the soil taken from around nuclear facilities. The fly ash can be contained within the facility and disposed of properly, like any other radioactive material. It does not need to be dispersed, but that requires government regulation.

Like I said, coal power plants can be made to produce power cleanly.
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Thats no real restauration, we do that here as well. You ed with some lakes and planted trees. Thats the end result.

rurtalsperre.jpg


Looks nice, generates profits but is not the original habitat, which was completly different than that. Its a solution for the mines we already have, but no argument for doing that any longer.

Look i´m a german patriot, i deeply love my home nation and too see **** like this doesnt make me feel good. To see such large areas devastated, entire villages destroyed.

We dont need coal to heat our homes (my family uses oil to do so and most in my area do). We are one of teh most technological advanced nations in the world. I think we should move beyond
a technology that is used since hundreds of years.
 
PoS said:
LOL huge problems when it comes to energy storage for renewables, not to mention cost and dubious environmental value. We'll see just how long this little experiment of theirs lasts.
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even that, but it has nothing to do with the enviorement, they couldnt care less, they just want to be less reliant on russia
 
JacksinPA said:
Germany is first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear

BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers have finalized the country’s long-awaited phase-out of coal as an energy source, backing a plan that environmental groups say isn’t ambitious enough and free marketeers criticize as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.

The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ - an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources. Achieving that goal is made harder than in comparable countries such as France and Britain because of Germany’s existing commitment to also phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022.
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This is the way every one will have to go eventually if we want to continue living on this planet.
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its not about the enviorement, they dont want to be dependent on russian oil
 
Rostocker said:
Coal is extremly dirty and entire German landscapes got destroyed by coal mining. Our Energy politics are none of your concerns.
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First, if only that were true, Rostocker. However, since my country is footing the bill for your country's defense it kind of is my business, especially since your government has put its domestic energy security in the hands of one of our nation's most perfidious adversaries.

Second, I am not advocating for Coal. But I do advocate for nuclear power.

Third: This is a public debate forum. You are sticking your nose into American politics despite not being able to vote in our country or have a say over our national affairs. That does not disqualify you from having an opinion on our affairs or expressing that opinion. Expect the same degree of reciprocity.
 
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Felis Leo said:
First, if only that were true, Rostocker. However, since my country is footing the bill for your country's defense it kind of is my business, especially since your government has put its domestic energy security in the hands of one of our nation's most perfidious adversaries.

Second, I am not advocating for Coal. But I do advocate for nuclear power.

Third: This is a public debate forum. You are sticking your nose into American politics despite not being able to vote in our country or have a say over our national affairs. That does not disqualify you from having an opinion on our affairs or expressing that opinion. Expect the same degree of reciprocity.
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1. Nope, our energy is none of your business. We are a souvereign nation.
2. We dont depend on your defense. Who you want defend us against? Denmark or Switzerland? Beside that, in absolute numbers Germany has the largest military budget of any western nation except USA.

There appears to be some slight misconception between americans and Germans. Could be seen when Trump pulled 9500 troops out of Germany and thought that would anger us. When infact the reaction in Germany was from not caring about it to asking: Why only 9500 and not all? Propably not the reaction Trump hoped for.

As for nuclear power, thats up to us to decide. We work on new reactor concepts, the old ones were simply not good enough for german standards. We have no place to store nuclear waste for example. As long thats no solved, its better to not run it in Germany.
 
Rostocker said:
1. Nope, our energy is none of your business. We are a souvereign nation.
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Then take it up with the moderators, Rostocker. Until they tell me otherwise, you can tell me it's none of my business, and I will continue to comment. Just as I can tell you that America's affairs are none of your business till I am blue in the face like and you can comment on them to your heart's content.

Rostocker said:
2. We dont depend on your defense. Who you want defend us against? Denmark or Switzerland? Beside that, in absolute numbers Germany has the largest military budget of any western nation except USA.
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Are you pretending that Russia stopped existing? If that is how you feel, by all means, please encourage your government to pull out of NATO.

Rostocker said:
There appears to be some slight misconception between americans and Germans. Could be seen when Trump pulled 9500 troops out of Germany and thought that would anger us. When infact the reaction in Germany was from not caring about it to asking: Why only 9500 and not all? Propably not the reaction Trump hoped for.
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On that we are agreed. Germany is the co-Hegemon of Europe along with France. It does not need us or our soldiers on its soil.

Rostocker said:
As for nuclear power, thats up to us to decide. We work on new reactor concepts, the old ones were simply not good enough for german standards. We have no place to store nuclear waste for example. As long thats no solved, its better to not run it in Germany.
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Totally agreed. That is for your country to decide.
 
JacksinPA said:
Germany is first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear

BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers have finalized the country’s long-awaited phase-out of coal as an energy source, backing a plan that environmental groups say isn’t ambitious enough and free marketeers criticize as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.

The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ - an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources. Achieving that goal is made harder than in comparable countries such as France and Britain because of Germany’s existing commitment to also phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022.
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This is the way every one will have to go eventually if we want to continue living on this planet.
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There is no valid reason to oppose nuclear power.
 
Felis Leo said:
Then take it up with the moderators, Rostocker. Until they tell me otherwise, you can tell me it's none of my business, and I will continue to comment. Just as I can tell you that America's affairs are none of your business till I am blue in the face like and you can comment on them to your heart's content.



Are you pretending that Russia stopped existing? If that is how you feel, by all means, please encourage your government to pull out of NATO.



On that we are agreed. Germany is the co-Hegemon of Europe along with France. It does not need us or our soldiers on its soil.



Totally agreed. That is for your country to decide.
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We dont see Russia as a threat.
 
Rostocker said:
Thats no real restauration, we do that here as well. You ed with some lakes and planted trees. Thats the end result.

rurtalsperre.jpg


Looks nice, generates profits but is not the original habitat, which was completly different than that. Its a solution for the mines we already have, but no argument for doing that any longer.
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Who cares if it isn't the original landscape? Displacing a single rock and you've changed the habitat. So what? Are you opposed to any development? I have news for you, even the cavemen changed their habitat to suit them. It is what humans do. So that is not a valid complaint.

There is nothing wrong with the restoration done in the photo you provided. You cannot tell that a strip-mine had ever been there.

Rostocker said:
Look i´m a german patriot, i deeply love my home nation and too see **** like this doesnt make me feel good. To see such large areas devastated, entire villages destroyed.

We dont need coal to heat our homes (my family uses oil to do so and most in my area do). We are one of teh most technological advanced nations in the world. I think we should move beyond
a technology that is used since hundreds of years.
Click to expand...

I lived in Germany for a couple of years during the early 1980s, when it was still divided. I loved the German people and culture, but I was not a fan of German politics or many of Germany's laws. I'm not a fan of American politics or many of America's laws either, but I'm more familiar with the American people and culture. I know Germany is more technologically advanced than other nations in the EU, but that doesn't mean you should discard a perfectly good, and cheap, resource.

It simply means Germany has to be smarter about how it uses that resource. Don't allow the fly ash to be dispersed. Contain it within the facility. Trap the greenhouse emissions and use it for other purposes, like crop production. Coal may have been a resource used for the last couple centuries, but that doesn't mean it cannot continued to be used if done correctly. Every objection you have about using coal for power production can be addressed. How much those solutions to your objections will add to the price of the power generated has yet to be determined. It could be that using a clean-burning coal power plant may end up costing more than simply using natural gas or nuclear to generate power. Or it may not.

My point is an old American idiom: "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
 
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Glitch said:
Who cares if it isn't the original landscape? Displacing a single rock and you've changed the habitat. So what? Are you opposed to any development? I have news for you, even the cavemen changed their habitat to suit them. It is what humans do. So that is not a valid complaint.

There is nothing wrong with the restoration done in the photo you provided. You cannot tell that a strip-mine had ever been there.



I lived in Germany for a couple of years during the early 1980s, when it was still divided. I loved the German people and culture, but I was not a fan of German politics or many of Germany's laws. I'm not a fan of American politics or many of America's laws either, but I'm more familiar with the American people and culture. I know Germany is more technologically advanced than other nations in the EU, but that doesn't mean you should discard a perfectly good, and cheap, resource.

It simply means Germany has to be smarter about how it uses that resource. Don't allow the fly ash to be dispersed. Contain it within the facility. Trap the greenhouse emissions and use it for other purposes, like crop production. Coal may have been a resource used for the last couple centuries, but that doesn't mean it cannot continued to be used if done correctly. Every objection you have about using coal for power production can be addressed. How much those solutions to your objections will add to the price of the power generated has yet to be determined. It could be that using a clean-burning coal power plant may end up costing more than simply using natural gas or nuclear to generate power. Or it may not.

My point is an old American idiom: "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
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Those mines create basicly crater lakes with too steep shorelines, not a real habitat. There are no amphibians, no rare birds, no rare plants. Its like a park and thats not what i want my country to be like. Those areas lack biodiversity. They made studies here and it takes up to 1500 years until a true habitat is formed.
 
Rostocker said:
Those mines create basicly crater lakes with too steep shorelines, not a real habitat. There are no amphibians, no rare birds, no rare plants. Its like a park and thats not what i want my country to be like. Those areas lack biodiversity. They made studies here and it takes up to 1500 years until a true habitat is formed.
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It will recover as well as can be expected considering Germany has 83 million people in an area slightly smaller than the State of Montana. That was something I noticed almost immediately when I moved to Germany. Every village, town, and city is no more than 25 miles apart, and most are within 10 miles of each other. Compared to the wide-open spaces of the US west of the Mississippi River, Germany is packed like a can of sardines. So I would give up on the idea of every having the original habitat restored. It can never happen in that kind of environment. In another couple generations wildlife in Germany will only be available in books and on computer screens.

In Alaska we have completely stripped entire islands of their trees, replanted the islands, and then 30 years later harvested them again. The animal life move into our restored areas in Alaska almost immediately, but with only one human for every 1.1 square miles in Alaska our environment is going to restore much faster to a more natural state than yours. We have developed less than 0.5% of Alaska.
 
Glitch said:
It will recover as well as can be expected considering Germany has 83 million people in an area slightly smaller than the State of Montana. That was something I noticed almost immediately when I moved to Germany. Every village, town, and city is no more than 25 miles apart, and most are within 10 miles of each other. Compared to the wide-open spaces of the US west of the Mississippi River, Germany is packed like a can of sardines. So I would give up on the idea of every having the original habitat restored. It can never happen in that kind of environment. In another couple generations wildlife in Germany will only be available in books and on computer screens.

In Alaska we have completely stripped entire islands of their trees, replanted the islands, and then 30 years later harvested them again. The animal life move into our restored areas in Alaska almost immediately, but with only one human for every 1.1 square miles in Alaska our environment is going to restore much faster to a more natural state than yours. We have developed less than 0.5% of Alaska.
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Well as i said, we dont want that. We do alot for nature here and the progress is amazing. We have now even sturgeons and salmon back in the Rhein. There is simply no will of the people to allow that mining. Would be political suicide for a politician to even suggest it.
 
Rostocker said:
Well as i said, we dont want that. We do alot for nature here and the progress is amazing. We have now even sturgeons and salmon back in the Rhein. There is simply no will of the people to allow that mining. Would be political suicide for a politician to even suggest it.
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The "will of the people" will quickly change when they get their electric bill and find out it is ten times higher than it use to be, or when your imported natural gas is suddenly turned off at the source. It is a very dangerous business to be importing a strategic resource. Germany is going to find that out the hard way.
 
Glitch said:
The "will of the people" will quickly change when they get their electric bill and find out it is ten times higher than it use to be, or when your imported natural gas is suddenly turned off at the source. It is a very dangerous business to be importing a strategic resource. Germany is going to find that out the hard way.
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Well not here. We have one of highest energy prices in the world and it did not change the will of the people in any way.
 
Rostocker said:
Well not here. We have one of highest energy prices in the world and it did not change the will of the people in any way.
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That may well change if your exported goods become even more expensive than they already are. In the 70's German goods (eg cars) were far better than products from other countries , that is different now, German products are no better but still command high prices...people are beginning to realise that German products are already over-priced .
 
Rostocker said:
Renaturation is bull****. The lakes are unnatural and dead. They are like rift valley lakes with no natural shoreline. Poor in species and no adequate habitat. Same counts for teh "forests". What they make is tree plantage and nothing else. Thats not a forest. I agree though that NRW in general is no big loss. Its the worst state of Germany.
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You're really writing Nonsense. For example, the photo shows an open-cast mining hole that was flooded from 1993 to 2000. Today the Cospudener lake - a popular destination for the people of Leipzig.
sz.1.2004173
 
Novalis said:
You're really writing Nonsense. For example, the photo shows an open-cast mining hole that was flooded from 1993 to 2000. Today the Cospudener lake - a popular destination for the people of Leipzig.
sz.1.2004173
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How much fisch otter, black storks, sturgeons or salmon live there? How much Salamander? I tell you. Zero. This lake has zero value as habitat. Its a water desert and like a big swimming pool. So you write nonsense.
 
Rostocker said:
How much fisch otter, black storks, sturgeons or salmon live there? How much Salamander? I tell you. Zero. This lake has zero value as habitat. Its a water desert and like a big swimming pool. So you write nonsense.
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You greens are longing for contaminated swamps with all kinds of vermin. In the Sahel zone where people don't even have a bucket of water for the emaciated cows, the photo of the lake district is comparable to a view of paradise.
Well, we have storks here, I often drive by in my car. They are on freshly mown meadows. Not a natural landscape, but a cultivated landscape. And there are also gravel pits which are very rich in species. The Greens are fighting for their preservation. The Greens only forget that it is not a grown nature.
Do you seriously want pure nature? The rivers as swamp-wilderness malaria contaminated. The forests are dangerous for hiking because you can get dead branches on your head all the time.
I can really do without it.

The big-city greens want to live in the middle of the conurbation and yearn for pure nature. For me they are crazy and hypocritical.
 
Novalis said:
You greens are longing for contaminated swamps with all kinds of vermin. In the Sahel zone where people don't even have a bucket of water for the emaciated cows, the photo of the lake district is comparable to a view of paradise.
Well, we have storks here, I often drive by in my car. They are on freshly mown meadows. Not a natural landscape, but a cultivated landscape. And there are also gravel pits which are very rich in species. The Greens are fighting for their preservation. The Greens only forget that it is not a grown nature.
Do you seriously want pure nature? The rivers as swamp-wilderness malaria contaminated. The forests are dangerous for hiking because you can get dead branches on your head all the time.
I can really do without it.

The big-city greens want to live in the middle of the conurbation and yearn for pure nature. For me they are crazy and hypocritical.
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Im not a Green. I lean political towards AfD. So what now?
 
JacksinPA said:
Germany is first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear

BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers have finalized the country’s long-awaited phase-out of coal as an energy source, backing a plan that environmental groups say isn’t ambitious enough and free marketeers criticize as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.

The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ - an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources. Achieving that goal is made harder than in comparable countries such as France and Britain because of Germany’s existing commitment to also phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022.
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This is the way every one will have to go eventually if we want to continue living on this planet.
Click to expand...

There Germany already gets over 50 percent of their electricity from renewables.

German renewables deliver 'record high' in 1H 2020 - reNews - Renewable Energy News

Germany also creates new jobs and opportunities for former coal miners.

How Germany closed its coal industry without sacking a single miner
 
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