I’ve singled Germany out for criticism on enviornmental policy for a few reasons:

1. The party in power is known as the “Green” party and is supposedly founded on a policy of being environmentally friendly and touts itself as being for ecologically friendly policies.

2. The Germany government has spent billions and billions on “renewable” energy sources, making it the largest installer of solar and one of the largest in wind. This has been the most public face of the enviornmental and energy policy.

3. They have been 100% opposed to nuclear power. Not only have they decided not to consider nuclear energy as part of energy plans in the future, but they are forcing the shutdown of existing reactors on a fast-paced schedule, even against the wishes of the utility companies with run them.

4. They have been building massive coal fired plants this whole time and increasing the dependence on coal due to the lack of energy from the renewable sources (which so much money is sunk into) and the closure of nuclear reactors.

I set out to label the areas effected by coal use in Germany, but I’ve done less than 25%. Simply put, the massive amounts of mining, burning and transporting of coal are just too large to label. It took me more than an hour to do what I have done thus far and it’s not even half done! I was also planning on doing other countries, but now I don’t know. In any case, I’d suggest you check it out. You will need Google Earth, which you should have anyway because it’s an awesome program which is fun to use and informative. Also, it’s free, so go download and install it. Then download and view this KMZ file to see just a small portion of the mines and other effects of coal burning.

Keep a few things in mind: While Germany has signed the Kyoto protocol and has claimed to be in favor of CO2 reduction, it continues to BUILD coal plants. The German government has never addressed this. The priority is to shut down all nuclear plants ASAP and coal, presumably is something for future generations to deal with. Also, don’t loose sight of how huge these things are. A “Small” open pit mine is only three miles across. After you have seen hundreds of mines and mine scars which are larger than most cities and towns it’s easy to get numb to the sheer amount of land destroyed. Obviously mining is a necessary part of an industrial world, whether digging for iron, copper or uranium. But these are HUGE and very numerous. They also produce truly massive amounts of runoff and mine waste. Additionally, coal mining can release huge amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas even more potent than CO2.

What are they doing about it? Talking a lot.

Germany claims it can reduce CO2 by 40% through efficiency, although how this will happen has never been explained. The current price of energy is very high in Germany and even rationing has occurred so it’s hard see how they can squeeze more out in terms of reduction of energy usage. Although there have been many promises, the rates have not dropped significantly. Indeed, the BBC even reported an increase in CO2 from vehicles in Germany in the past few years. It’s hard to get an accurate picture of the CO2 numbers for Germany because the country was reunified in the early 1990’s and since then many of the older power plants and industrial facilities in the eastern part of the country have been upgraded to higher effeciency systems. However, in the past few years, the levels have fluctuated, but show no overall trend of declining. It is predicted that they will rise as more plants are built.

Most of the plans put out by Germany for CO2 reduction involve explicit caps on CO2 and “credit trading” within the EU. This would allow them to purchase CO2 credits from nations like France, which are already ahead of the pack due to their reliance on nuclear energy. But ironically, while these limits apply to home heating and airlines (a relatively small contributer of overall CO2 production) the limits do not apply to coal power plants, some of the largest CO2 producers! This can end up being worse than no regulations, allowing more polluting from power plants while German citizens suffer in cold homes and without the ability to travel as they would like.

Finally, I’d like to mention one extremely compelling example of what Coal can destroy:

In the US, we have Centralia PA, but in Germany it’s the community of Garzweiler. Garzweiler was a city which sat on the edge of one of the larger open-pit mines in Germany, which feeds some several power plants with filthy lignite, a low quality coal. As the mine crept forward, moving past the depleted regions of the coal seem, the city stood in its way. Thus, the residents were bought out and the town raised so that the coal could continue to be mined. The area where it once stood is now in the middle of the open pit mine. This was only possible because of government subsidies for mining which helped pay for the move. Displacing the residents and destroying the community was necessary to keep the power flowing, but now the mine is creeping near to part of the Autobahn highway. It may have to be moved.

Since the 1950’s, dozens of communities and tens of thousands have been displaced by such mining operations in Germany and vast groundwater resources have been rendered unusable. This page provides additional information. And yes, they do plan to continue this for the next few decades. So much for “Green.”

Here is where it was. In the background are three massive power plants. There are also hundreds of windmills visible between them, although only barely noticable in this crop of the photo. Needless to say, they do not do much to help reduce coal use. The full sized panorama can be found here.

The site is also home to the world’s largest bucket-wheel excivater. This massive machine allows for continuous digging of the coal seem. The machine chews into the coal seem with the rotating wheel and carries the coal to a system of conveyors which transport the coal from the mine and to the trains which carry off the coal or directly to the local power plants where it is burned. Although the largest of it’s kind, it is not unusual for mines like this to employ such gigantic machinery. Having massive bucket wheels or drag-line excavators is necessary to produce the massive volumes of coal which are required for power generation.

The area is also home to some of the very large wind and solar projects. Although they don’t actually do much other than get press attention.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Nuclear, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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