As a German I find that article... uhm... Interesting. I could also just call bulls*it.
First: With a population of about 2m and as part of former East Germany, Thüringen is _hardly_ representative of Germany (pop 83m). That's less than 2.5% of the population.
Second: In Bavaria the Green party did quite well (2nd strongest in 2018); and in Germany as a whole it does too.
Edit: In Hessen (Germany's most populous state) state the Green party was the 2nd strongest as well.
Third: I'm pretty sure windmills are not among the major reasons for the popularity of the AfD.
> But in the first half of 2019, only 35 wind turbines were added — an 82% drop compared with the first six months of 2018. Last year was bad, too: Just 743 turbines were added, compared with 1,792 in 2017.
Complex bureaucracy, a change in the law a few years ago that's now going into full force, lack of political support (which is a very different thing than population support).
Every time surveys are done you get a vast majority (here's a recent one [1]) stating that they support more wind energy.
As I recall the financial incentives for renewables have changed sharply to the worse. Which easily explains a reluctance in investing further into the segment.
There were lots of differences. Here's what sticks out the most more than 20 years later.
Dortmund is a large cosmopolitan city in the former West Germany. My friend was on exchange at a Gymnasium[2] so most of the kids he hung out with were college-bound.
I was in a town (small enough that I'll omit the name) that was about as rural as you get in the former East Germany. I literally met every 15-19 year old that lived in the town. I don't know if they nearly all showed up to the parties normally, or if it was just because an American was there.
I picked up a very strong accent while I was there; most noticeably the "ch", which, in "proper" German is a breathy sound made from the back of the throat, was pronounced more or less like the english "sh" sound. Also the "u" sound is pronounced much more closely to the ü sound; to the point where I couldn't tell the difference at conversational speeds (but I did learn to speak them differently: schwul is a not particularly nice slang term for homosexual, schwül means muggy).
In Thueringen, the schools were very heavily tracked[1] from a very young age, and since there was no gymnasium[2] in the town, there was only one teenager in the entire town planning to go to University. After a week of me living in Germany, she was the only person I met who spoke English significantly better than I spoke German (and no, I didn't speak German very well, which caused lots of communication problems).
In Dortmund, my friend was commonly asked "Why are you learning German? Everyone in Germany speaks English just fine!" Even when I visited areas closer to Erfurt (the capital of the Thueringen region), I often got "Gott sei dank, du kannst Deutsch" (Thank God, you can speak German). This was exaggerated by the fact that even well-educated adults would have been encouraged to learn Russian as their primary foreign language rather than English in the DDR.
At the time, there was also a lot of social tension between the West and East. In Thueringen, it was a complicated relationship, because a lot of people had a sudden windfall when their DDR Marks were converted to Deutchemarks on a 2:1 basis (much better than the open-market rate). They were thankful for the West doing this, but also felt like the Wessit (westerners) looked down on them as lesser and in need of improving.
On my flight back to the US, I sat next to someone from the Frankfurt area, and once I mentioned where I had been living, he went on about how the Ossit (Easterners) were lazy, but it's not their fault because they were raised under a regime where work was not rewarded &c. My friend who went to Dortmund confirmed that this was a not uncommon thing to hear when asking people what they felt about the reunification[3]
I am by no means conservative, but to this day I get the same icky feeling when I hear coastal Democrats say similarly condescending things about poor red state voters voting "against their own interests."
3: German reunification, the upcoming Euro currency, and the ongoing World Cup (until Germany lost to Croatia) were some suggested conversation starters to get us speaking German more, so both my friend and I asked people about those things.
I live in Germany and I am in the camp of those who believe that paying for pretty clean and sustainable energy source with having a couple of turbines installed and "ruining" the view of some places is worth it (as long as it is planned with at least some degree of care). But of course a lot of it is nimbyism as support for renewables and clean sources or energy is rather high.
And that's even if you believe the view is ruined by windmills. Personally I don't mind seeing them at all, but there have been protests here against installing them off the beach. By now that windmill park is complete and all you can see from the beach is some toothpicks on the horizon on an exceptionally clear day.
I really wonder what causes this split among people, why do some people not mind at all and other people mind so much when they are looking at the same things.
I wondered the same thing. In Massachusetts there were protests that help scuttle the cape wind project.. Wealthy opponents (Koch/kenedey et al) litigated it to failure, after raising 40 million to “protect Nantucket sound”
Plus Massachusetts. (generally has trouble getting anything done.)
The biggest problem with nearby wind turbines is not the view but the _noise_. They make an extremely annoying continuous whumping sound.
Source: am a big fan of renewables, don't mind seeing windmills, but know and visit 'green' people who live near them. Nobody near them loves them, no matter how 'green' they aspire to be.
Of course, offshore makes the whole sound problem go away. I've seen plenty of near-shore farms, big stacks of the things laid out in a grid, and they are not even bad looking.
I normally love how they look. However, I specifically remember one time when I went to Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia, and I actually disliked what they did to the view in the area. I do believe we should look at them as development. Areas like national parks or reserves should be off limits to any sort of development, to include wind turbines.
Newspaper had an article about a couple having their home in the shadow of a huge windmill. Basically, every time it turns 1/3th, a huge shadow falls over everything. light - dark - light - dark. That would drive anybody nuts.
The law requires the windmills to be build at least 200m from homes, but in this case, the law was simply ignored and a permit was given, to reach some green target.
The windmill owner suggested they sell their house (to who?) and move.
I completely sympathize with those people and as you stated the law was broken and I think the proper law should be enforced. Yet, from what I gather people are still on the fence even if all laws are considered properly because even with the windmills 3 miles away they will hate on them.
Uhhh. Sorry but I am having a very difficult to time believing this. If it were true, the windmill and permitting jurisdiction are looking at a huge lawsuit that they cannot win. Please provide a link or citation to this newspaper article.
Kinda hard. It was a (paper)newspaper abandoned on a train.
But there are plenty comparable situations. Here an article from a family living in a situation allowed by law: at most 30h per year in the shadow which turns out to be 30 minutes per day while they are eating. They made a youtube movie.
If you ever stood close to such a huge windmill, you might have realized that they are actually pretty loud.
Even if you're inside a house, there is a constant noise from these windmills, day and night.
I understand that they are necessary to meet the goals for renewable energy production, but I see the point of the residents living close to them.
Yeah, older ones had some issues with the blade geometry iirc which caused a fairly penetrating "Wump" noise which people complained about. There's a big one in the town I live in, and people were complaining that the low frequency noise it was generating was impacting quality of life.
I presume that's something which has been optimised away with newer designs?
Being as generous as possible to the claim (although I agree it’s probably bollocks) — being near a turbine turning means you’re also in a windy environment, which would drown out lower power sounds while you’re outside. Inside, that masking sound is absent, and a lower-power sound might be perceptible. Maybe.
It's not 'a couple' it's a considerable amount of them, and though you might not mind, it's not entirely unreasonable that those who live in those communities might mind.
Yeh this whole thing seems like Germans are just unhappy with every solution, but I have a feeling it's media engine that decides this and not actual Germans.
My impression is that Germany is like California. They love technology and certain aspects of high modernity but never want to catch so much as a glimpse of the industrial infrastructure that makes or powers it. They also have a similar paradoxical "volkisch" fetish for organic food and natural medicine along with their high tech cars and computers and phones and techno music.
As a European citizen who looks at fat American people (and death statistics for American people) sometimes in disgust/pity I prefer to stay with my natural food, thank you very much.
As for wind mills I'm all for having many of them.
This article mis-states vox-pop as a broad story. I would have said "German's decide they don't want in-fill of current giant windmills with more giant windmills but overall like clean energy" is more like it.
Bingo! I think you have it exactly right. Sure Germans do, and should, dislike windmills placed in unfavorable locations solely as a result of distorting tax credits, policy, and the like. I do too. Any rational person should. That does not make one anti-windmill. Rather, it makes one anti-idiocy.
Not sure I fully buy this op-ed's claims but honestly Germany isn't the ideal place for on-shore wind anyway. The capacity factor in Germany for wind is only around 20%. In the US it's more like 35%. So further expansion requires building a lot more turbines in a much smaller country.
bloomberg has an anti-renewables article at least once a week since, I dunno, 1 year or so?
It's ridiculous.
No one hates renewables generally, anywhere, this is largely a propaganda item being pushed by big oil.
Bloomberg should show some leadership instead.
Cue last weeks study in which offshore wind farm development even in only the select windiest stretches of global coastline provide over 30 trillion megawatt hours, aka about 10 trillion more than projected demand for next year or the year after, I forget which.
Cue Mark Carney, governor of Bank of England saying that the companies that don't adapt to the climate crisis fast enough will go bankrupt, as it will cost increasingly more the longer one waits.
He also suggested, vis-a-vis the current state of the global economy and downturn concerns trade war etc, that this is actually the PERFECT time to invest in Green New Deals everywhere, lot's of investment, big projects, now, keep that balloon open and use that momentum to effect the necessary change NOW!
I don't know if you've ever lived in a windmill region, but everybody hates them if its in their backyard. I support green energy, but god forbid it 'desecrate' a field within 40km of my property. Suddenly every rinky-dink town has a unique cultural character and every backwoods is a natural habitat for endangered species. Nobody can take even a little responsibility for the problems of society, its always make somebody else pay for it.
> No one hates renewables generally, anywhere, this is largely a propaganda item being pushed by big oil.
I think this is more reflective of your acquaintances than society than society at large. There is a large contingent of people who really don't want windmills anywhere near them. I've met them in person and heard the complaints. None of them worked for big oil.
We are being bled dry by extremely high power prices. Left wing government has replaced nuclear by coal and opposes our fusion research. But somehow right wing parties and Russia are the baddies, and any critic is being is being [dead]ed within seconds. Right.
I am, within the boundaries of my understanding, for the nuclear power. So I'm not very happy that they shut them down, let's just say that. However, I don't understand how being against wind power helps this situation, at all.
IMHO, shutting down is not even necessarily the problem. Many of these reactors are ancient, and the state-of-the-art has moved on. But lessons were learned and new reactors could take over and sometimes even help solve issues created by older models.
Well, I would say the"critics" comment was deaded not just because it was criticising. It did so in a sarcastic manner providing no reason whatsoever. At least that's my take on it.
Same in the US. 165 meters tall, loud, and built very close to residential. And, it’s pretty much just the rural poor (< $8000 / year income) who suffer, and they see receive economic benefits.
Are they any louder in Germany than in Britain? It seems that by suffering, they are just missing the benefit of the quiet rural areas. City dwellers of most stripes suffer worse noise levels according to my limited research.
One example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKgN2G9d0dc
First: With a population of about 2m and as part of former East Germany, Thüringen is _hardly_ representative of Germany (pop 83m). That's less than 2.5% of the population.
Second: In Bavaria the Green party did quite well (2nd strongest in 2018); and in Germany as a whole it does too. Edit: In Hessen (Germany's most populous state) state the Green party was the 2nd strongest as well.
Third: I'm pretty sure windmills are not among the major reasons for the popularity of the AfD.