This report seems to be a bit one-sided. They say the lakes will be used as reservoirs for rivers like the spree. The issue is that the spree was feed for years with excess water from the old mines which had to pump the water out. Now they don’t pump water anymore to fill up these lakes and some parts of the spree run low on water during summer. The water table fell a lot over the last 10 to 20 years in Berlin. I’m not sure what exactly contributed to this situation overall. But they had plans to pump water from the Elbe into the Spree to help out with the situation. But cities downstream are not happy about the situation. For me this feels like a somewhat similar situation to the Colorado River situation with the upper and lower basins.
To provide a counterpoint that is missing in the article: Conservation organizations are somewhat skeptical that these projects might take much longer and be more expensive than planned, due to climate change.
Projects like Garzweiler and Hambach were expected to take 25 to 30 years to fill up, but with droughts like this summer it might take much longer and the water would have to be diverted from already stressed ecosystems like the Rhine.
This whole topic has become much more complicated in the last years...
The "interesting" part is that the mine closing will significantly reduce the water supply to Berlin on its own, and filling the pit will probably raise the issue to possibly catastrophic levels: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/spr...
No, not exactly. Many kinds of rocks and soil will release Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) or otherwise release sulfates and heavy metals into the environment. Of course a lot of this will already be known from the treatments they had to do when keeping the water table low when mining.
When I was a kid I remember a number of very old stone quarries that had been allowed to fill, then years later they had to put up warnings for people to stay out because the high Ph water was dissolving metals into it.
There's a sandstone quarry I've swam in, the deep end is 60+ feet deep. I wouldn' want to be a lifeguard there. Although the added depth doesn't really mater past about 15 feet.
There are lots of these in northern Minnesota and they used the tailings to turn the areas into some really great mountain biking trails, which really helps those old mining towns.
One might think that they've come to the conclusion that it's time to phase out coal and move towards renewables.
But coal is still big in Germany, and with the current Minister for Economic Affairs, Katarina Reiche [1], the fossil fuel lobby has installed a puppet in that position, one who is going all in on fossils again and pushing legislation that makes it much harder to expand solar and wind capacity.
Even though no one needs coal anymore, big companies like RWE still forcibly demolish villages to expand their mines and show off their power .
Wind and solar power do not provide dispatchable power and they therefore do not replace conventional power plants.
Germany isn't keeping their coal-fired power plants and they're not building new gas-fired power plants despite the energy transition but because of it.
You're spreading conspiracy theories when you claim Katherina Reiche is a fossil fuel puppet. She is doing what has always been the plan for the energy transition: Building gas-fired power plants.
That plan is even in the DENA study for the energy transition:
And before you claim DENA is some sort of fossil fuel lobby organization, they're not. DENA belongs to the German state and was founded in 2000 by SPD and Greens:
Yes, the so called base load isn’t the strength of intermittent renewables and yet Germany turned off clean, nuclear power in favor of gas and coal plants.
Fear. I grew up when the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl reached us. I didn’t grow up eating mushrooms. We still measure radioactivity here, ask any hunter. When Fukushima happened, it tore open an old wound. Is it rational? I’m not sure, but I remember my parents taking in 2 Ukrainians for a month to detox in Germany.
Sorry, but in Germany there isn't even much of a debate anymore about whether she is a puppet of the gas industry. She even asked EnBW for arguments in favor of gas-fired power plants in order to avoid holding a technology-neutral tender process as required by the EU: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/katherina-reiches-minister...
The Tagebaurekultivierungsaktivitäten have been going on for a long time. I remember visiting some former open pit in the 90s, as they started filling it, noting how it would take like 10 years or so. Pretty strange land.
10 years? That's nothing. Flooding Hambach will take approximately 40 years. And that includes water from the Rhine carried there by pipeline, which in the current state of the Rhine is... optimistic.
Why mention nuclear but not wind? Wind has nearly as low an LCOE as solar, and is still dropping too, and wind power is anti-correlated with solar power, meaning we get more wind at night and in the winter.
One of these things is not like the other. You can have solar next week at a reliable price and you'll be able to buy insurance for your solar array on the private market. Nuclear isn't going to happen no matter how many data center projects get hyped. No nuclear project will be complete before we're all talking about data centers like we talk about the Metaverse.
Why would that be unreasonable? Generating some power somewhere, sometime isn't hard. Generating the right amount at the right time in the right location is. (In other words logistics.)
So yeah the cost is in moving and storing the electricity by maintaining and expanding the infrastructure.
Even if the number of gas turbines will increase (it's not increasing nearly as much as you'd think if you just look at the number being built, because old ones are also being decomissioned), the amount of gas being burnt on an annual level is going to be going down. These gas plants are for bridging gaps left open by wind and solar which cannot yet be covered by batteries.
If you believe in the transition to renewables, Germany fundamentally does still need gas turbines to make that happen, more than we currently have.
That's not inconsistent. A robust grid will have enough capacity of any sort to cover peak demand during a dankelflaute but enough zero-emissions generation and storage to cover generation at all other times.
And that's exactly what Germany is doing. Their natural gas plants only run ~15% of the time. Usage is going down faster than capacity is going up.
It has to be scoped by area. A Dankelflaute that covers the European continent has never been observed. OTOH, a Dankelflaute that covers only Germany is a regular occurrence.
I'm saying there is always wind blowing somewhere on the continent. For the time period where we have had widespread measurement of wind speeds continent wide, there has never been an hour without enough wind to turn a generator in some location.
I'm sceptical that more gas turbines doesn't create a more vulnerable grid. The possibility of gas shortages this winter is on the horizon and if the UK were to cease exports for whatever reason it would be a disaster for the rest of Europe.
Ed Conway released a video on the UK's gas network and disaster planning[0].
As shown in their documentary, a shutdown of exports to Europe would only require 2 or 3 failure events (low production from wind/solar, high-usage of gas for power/heating, disruption or cessation of imports via gas-tankers, well-placed damage to the gas network, extreme weather in the north sea). To maintain pressure in the gas network, they would begin shedding the largest loads first, exports to mainland Europe is #1 on that list.
Let's also not forget Nordstream and the disaster that caused when it mysteriously blew up. Before those pipelines exploded, there were protests in Germany because people were struggling to heat their homes.
Nuclear isn't vulnerable to any of these issues, we're very lucky that construction and investment has continued these past decades. /s
Capacity isn't the problem, usage is. If Europe reduced its usage to about 10% of current usage, full tanks would last a full year.
Nuclear is unsuited for this problem. Europe needs something that will supply approximately all of its power needs for only a few days a year. Europe already has enough natural gas storage to do this. If you built enough nuclear to cover all its power needs for a few days a year you'd have enough nuclear to supply all its power needs 365 days a year. That would work great, but it would cost tens of trillions.
1. There should be plenty broken up press board after the apocalypse. It is apparently quite flammable but sometimes gives off bad emissions. Perhaps you should set up a website where people can print a guide to press board emissions, so we all will know which to cook foods with and which to only heat with.
2. And there should be plenty of auto tires. Here's a fella who needs only a few tires each day to heat a 12' x 16' corrugated metal siding workshop:
https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2026/07/wasser-mangel-...
Projects like Garzweiler and Hambach were expected to take 25 to 30 years to fill up, but with droughts like this summer it might take much longer and the water would have to be diverted from already stressed ecosystems like the Rhine.
This whole topic has become much more complicated in the last years...
There are some very nice natural swimming pools in the local area thanks to that, for example:
https://www.kudyznudy.cz/aktivity/koupaliste-u-libuse-v-lule... (stone quarry, IMHO one of the best summer swimming pools anywhere)
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zatopen%C3%BD_lom_v_Blansku (stone quarry)
https://www.jednoustopouceskem.cz/listing/lom-kaolinka-prime... (kaolin mine)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAL_d-5FsGQ - Tioga Pit Mine (225' deep)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Mine_Pit_Lake (450' deep)
https://www.thw.com/projects/49-senior-living/323-berry-coll...
Turning old brownfield into usable and livable space is a win all around
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/V-HW5HAL7Lk
What you're thinking of is the processing aspect of mining, which is a whole different beast.
When I was a kid I remember a number of very old stone quarries that had been allowed to fill, then years later they had to put up warnings for people to stay out because the high Ph water was dissolving metals into it.
In the 1990s, we lived on a lake in Indiana that was reclaimed from strip mines. Recommended.
https://www.cityoftenino.us/parks-recreation/page/quarry-poo...
This quarry in chicago used as a storm water buffer is cool. It would be interesting to drive over it when it is full.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/environment/2026/07/11/chicago-...
One might think that they've come to the conclusion that it's time to phase out coal and move towards renewables. But coal is still big in Germany, and with the current Minister for Economic Affairs, Katarina Reiche [1], the fossil fuel lobby has installed a puppet in that position, one who is going all in on fossils again and pushing legislation that makes it much harder to expand solar and wind capacity. Even though no one needs coal anymore, big companies like RWE still forcibly demolish villages to expand their mines and show off their power .
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherina_Reiche [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine
Germany isn't keeping their coal-fired power plants and they're not building new gas-fired power plants despite the energy transition but because of it.
You're spreading conspiracy theories when you claim Katherina Reiche is a fossil fuel puppet. She is doing what has always been the plan for the energy transition: Building gas-fired power plants.
That plan is even in the DENA study for the energy transition:
https://www.dena.de/fileadmin/dena/Dokumente/Pdf/9262_dena-L... (p. 29)
And before you claim DENA is some sort of fossil fuel lobby organization, they're not. DENA belongs to the German state and was founded in 2000 by SPD and Greens:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Energie-Agentur
I wonder how that happened…
lol, wtf?!
Before becoming a minister she was employed by E.ON (for non-Germans: one of the big four energy companies in Germany) to lobby for their interests.
She is _the_ prototype of a fossil fuel puppet.
Because production costs aren't what's setting the prices, supply and demand is.
Cheap solar and wind power doesn't help when it's not available.
So yeah the cost is in moving and storing the electricity by maintaining and expanding the infrastructure.
If you believe in the transition to renewables, Germany fundamentally does still need gas turbines to make that happen, more than we currently have.
And that's exactly what Germany is doing. Their natural gas plants only run ~15% of the time. Usage is going down faster than capacity is going up.
https://unpopular-truth.com/2024/07/05/natures-influence-on-...
Also, have you ever done some research on how winds work? They're usually blowing (or not blowing) across the whole continent.
So, yeah, Dunkelflauten usually cover the whole continent.
https://communities.springernature.com/posts/quantifying-the...
Ed Conway released a video on the UK's gas network and disaster planning[0].
As shown in their documentary, a shutdown of exports to Europe would only require 2 or 3 failure events (low production from wind/solar, high-usage of gas for power/heating, disruption or cessation of imports via gas-tankers, well-placed damage to the gas network, extreme weather in the north sea). To maintain pressure in the gas network, they would begin shedding the largest loads first, exports to mainland Europe is #1 on that list.
Let's also not forget Nordstream and the disaster that caused when it mysteriously blew up. Before those pipelines exploded, there were protests in Germany because people were struggling to heat their homes.
Nuclear isn't vulnerable to any of these issues, we're very lucky that construction and investment has continued these past decades. /s
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKDnZz4wypI
Nuclear is unsuited for this problem. Europe needs something that will supply approximately all of its power needs for only a few days a year. Europe already has enough natural gas storage to do this. If you built enough nuclear to cover all its power needs for a few days a year you'd have enough nuclear to supply all its power needs 365 days a year. That would work great, but it would cost tens of trillions.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/fifteen_minutes
Very useful.
1. There should be plenty broken up press board after the apocalypse. It is apparently quite flammable but sometimes gives off bad emissions. Perhaps you should set up a website where people can print a guide to press board emissions, so we all will know which to cook foods with and which to only heat with.
2. And there should be plenty of auto tires. Here's a fella who needs only a few tires each day to heat a 12' x 16' corrugated metal siding workshop:
https://www.farmshow.com/view_articles.php?a_id=1072
Another article with photos:
https://www.farmshow.com/a_download_page.php?aid=MzI4Nw==
3. Finally we see:
"Study Shows Dangerous Plastics Are Being Used As Fuel To Heat Homes":
https://www.slashgear.com/2075676/plastic-fuel-burning-heat-...
So I don't see a problem finding dry combustible fuel, In fact gathering fuel will be somewhat like gathering manna in the desert!8-))