Bucket-Wheel Excavators: The Most Destructive Machines on the Planet?
The bucket-wheel excavator has long scoured the lignite fields of western Germany, erasing whole villages and leaving a trail of bad soil and salty water.
With all sorts of claims being made about clean energy and clean tech, it is more than a mere academic exercise to explore what those terms really mean. One way of defining something is by defining what it is not. For example, the large bucket-wheel excavators like those used in the open-cast lignite mines of western Germany are not clean tech. And here’s why…
At 300 feet tall and 600 feet long, the largest bucket wheel excavators are the biggest land vehicles ever made. Though they only dig at a maximum of 0.37 mph, these machines move 240,000 cubic meters of material daily, about as much as a football field dug to 100 feet deep.
Because they continuously dig, transport, and dump material twenty-four hours a day these machines require 16 megawatts of externally supplied electricity; and there are twenty-two currently in use in the four open-cast lignite mines in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Bucket wheel excavators have been working these lignite fields since 1933, playing an instrumental role in fueling the Hitler machine with coal-based synfuel. Over the years, the mining activities have scarred the land and created massive canyons, reaching up to 500 metres deep and over 10 Km wide (see a 360 degree panorama of the lignite coal mine in Garzweiler). Continued…
Those giant machines are awesome! I have one on my Christmas list for this year. I love big machines.
Consider who you’re writing for. Common people.
Tim,
What’s your solution and who will pay for it?
Khurt-
There is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot. Although brown coal may be “cheap” now, when you factor in the “externalities” of its production, it no longer seems like such a good deal.
That term, externalities, makes me see red. It’s not external to anyone except the economists and corporate execs in their cushy offices. The rest of us live out in that real world which is “external” to them.
If the future wasn’t subsidizing most of the price of coal (and oil, and nuclear) we’d have switched to clean and sustainable energy decades ago.
Great post.
(And while I have my language police hat on . . . razed. NOT raised. Eep.)
quixote- Yes, Eep indeed. Thanks.
[...] Dirtiest Tech on the Planet?: Looking for a clear cut definition of what’s clean technology, and what’s not? Here’s a definite “not”: The bucket-wheel excavator, which leaves a trail of destroyed villages, bad soil and salty water as it scours western Germany’s lignite fields. — CleanTechnica [...]
quixote,
There is nothing wrong with the term. Externalities are external to the transaction taking place, in this case the purchase of coal for a price that covers the cost of extraction plus a margin for the producer. (This means that the transaction may happen even if it is value destructive for society as a whole.)
The solution for externalities in economic theory is to “internalize” them, which means making the corporate execs in their crusty offices pay for the damage they do. I hope we can agree that this is a good thing, and that we can let the economists off the hook?
I always liked Germany and what they do for renewables and energy efficiency. But getting half of their electricity with coal and those ugly huge machines… no, no and no !
France chose nuclear. It has problems, but to choose between that and coal I would choose nuclear because of its low emissions.
No energy solution is perfect… however your blog is ! Keep it up !
I am torn on this one - the machine is incredibly destructive … but on the other hand, it is INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE.
Cool. Evil and wrong, of course, but cool.