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by MichaelMoser123 2566 days ago
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunkohlebergbau

In Germany they have relocated some 100.000 persons over the years, just to mine and burn lignite (not peat - corrections) for electricity. I think that's crazy. (The irony is that the Green party is currently the strongest political party in Germany, but the energy sector seems to have a stronger influence, go figure)
3 comments
hef19898 2566 days ago
Just had very quick look at coal subsidies in Germany, it seems stone coal alone is getting 3.2 Bn per year... Not verified the source, so. Based on the last Wp prices for solar modules of roughly 0.3 €, doubling to cover installation, that amounts to 5 GW, give or take a little bit... Not too bad I think considering that in 2017 or 2018 world wide installations amounted to roughly 100 GW. And you would have jobs to get the plants installed and maintained.
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ginko 2566 days ago
Braunkohle isn't peat.
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wumms 2566 days ago
Peat == Torf
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MichaelMoser123 2566 days ago
Not a big difference to the environment, is there?
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hannob 2566 days ago
Peat is worse.

That's not to say lignite is in any way "good", it's still a horribly inefficient way of getting energy. But peat stores large amounts of methane and carbon which gets released when drying it. Mining lignite coal also release some of that, but in much smaller amounts.

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wumms 2566 days ago
A quick estimation about the environmental impacts (with data for Germany only) shows peat is at least 5-20 times worse in terms of surface destruction - I have no idea how to compare the ecological impact of removing a biotope vs. moving a town.

Lignite:

- thickness of a lignite bed 11-35m [0]

- surface destruction per metric ton: 220-700 cm² [0]

Peat:

- thickness of a peat layer 1,5-2m [0])

- surface destruction per metric ton [1]:

-- at least 3,850-5,130 cm² (using the same density for coal and peat)

-- 6,000-8,000 cm² (moist peat, 0.8g/cm³ [2])

-- 10,000-13,300 cm² (dried peat, 0.4 g/cm³ [2], considering the higher calorific value for peat [4])

-- at worst 12,000-16,000 cm² (dried peat, 0.4 g/cm³ [2])

[0] (Data from 2015 for German mining areas; page in German) https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/flaeche-boden-land-oeko...

[1] There was no data for the surface destruction for peat in [0] so I estimated it using densities from [2]:

thickness lignite bed x surface destruction lignite x density lignite / density lignite / thickness lignite

e.g. 700 cm² x 11 m x 1.25 g/cm³ / 0.801 g/cm³ / 1.5 m = 8011 cm²

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=peat+lignite

[3] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fuels-higher-calorific-va...

[4] The gross calorific value for peat is 5-20 % higher than for lignite [2]-[3]; though I guess that does not exclude the energy needed for drying the peat.

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