Bucket-Wheel Excavators: The Most Destructive Machines on the Planet?
The arrangement now, is such that, landowners no longer receive land in exchange for their property, only cash (parcels of land were once part of the package); with acreage at a premium in the German countryside, this can put a real pinch on local farmers who may lose a sliver of their land that they are never able to put back into productivity.
The Rhineland lignite mines are currently working at depths of up to 350m, and will dig up to 500m deep, depending on the depth of the lignite layers. At such depths, it is imperative for effective extraction to keep the earth dry, so ground water is drained out by a chain of pumping stations.
Most of this water goes unused and ends up in the Rhine and Maas rivers, lowering the water table in the region and concentrating the contaminates in what is left. The end result being poor quality water and less of it, and an ecosystem that may take thousands of years to repair itself.
Lands that were once prized for their rich top soil are never fully restored such that they can sustain productive agriculture. Even after the lignite mining pits are reclaimed, the soil left over is not suitable for vegetable farming or productive animal grazing because the good top soil (or, “overburden”) has been scraped off and remixed with the slag leftover from burning coal at local plants.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the poor fuel quality of lignite, losing as much as 60% of its energy to the atmosphere as waste heat, and more carbon dioxide, particulates, and sulphur dioxide than bituminous and subbituminous coal.
There you have it, the evidence has been presented, and the case has been made. I will let you decide for yourself, but by my own calculations, bucket-wheel excavators are decidedly not clean tech.
Images: 1., 2. Wikipedia; 3., 4., 6., 7. BK59; 5., 8. © Forbidden Places, used with permission of author; 9. Courtesy of oeke-energie.de
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.