this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
588 points (82.3% liked)

World News

32348 readers
480 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] julietOscarEcho 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And most often high costs mean higher ROI. The wind farm doesn't get continued funding precisely because it produces electricity when supply is high and hence prices are low. Electricity is not worth the same at all times; you can sell your coal fired watts when the wind speeds are low and the unit price jumps up. Instead of trying to solve the hard problem of storing electricity to fill the intermittency gap, capitalism takes the easy way out of burning fossil fuels unless you force it not to by regulating.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah that's another issue. This video gives another generally good overview on the topic: https://youtu.be/3gSzzuY1Yw0

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/3gSzzuY1Yw0

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.