Notes

Driving through Germany you’d normally think that it’s either city or all nice and green. At least that’s what I used to think. Seeing this moon landscape, really, feels very surreal, even when you’re standing right there at the official lookout point.

This is the Tagebau (surface mine) Inden. It delivers 23 million metric tons of lignite every year, all of which goes to the power plant Weisweiler. It has a size of 42.2 square kilometres (that’s 16.3 square miles) and is allowed to grow to 45 square kilometres (17.3 square miles). As this is right in the middle of Germany, a fairly densely populated country, a lot of villages had to be completely torn down and re-built elsewhere to make space for it when it was opened. And it’s actually not the largest of it’s kind in the immediate area (just the one closest to me).

I absolutely hate this. The powerplant has scored place six on a list of the thirty most environmentally damaging powerplants in Europe, and the damage to the landscape needs no telling. Of course, at the same time I’m typing on my computer and have my fan running, all of which use electricity that has probably been produced there. Lignite is the only energy source that Germany has in large quantities and where it makes sense economically to mine it, so I see little realistic alternative to this. But I still hate it.