Tag Archives: Renewable Energy

Green Power and Black Sheep

Leave a reply

basically I don’t have anything against Black Sheep – the opposite is actually the case: not so long time ago Environmentalists, Globalisation-Sceptics, Human-Rights-, Anti-Nuclear- and other Activists and even members of the Green Party were sometimes treated like ‘Black Sheep’…

Nowadays hopefully nobody really wants to doupt that fossil fuels are limited, nuclear power is not such a good idea – and sooner or later we will have to move on and switch to alternative, renewable, regenerative – green sources of enery such as wind, water and solar power.

Actually these ‘natural/green’ power sources are currently so popular in Germany, that the demand can hardly be satisfied by the ‘natural/green’ power plants in operation today. This is obviously not the wind’s or the sun’s fault – these two colleagues deliver way more energy than we can consume. It’s a man made mistake – we are just not collecting or ‘harvesting’ enough of that energy.

What to do…? Some German newspapers ( Tagesspiegel and Spiegel-Online) recently reported, that one of the big players in German green power business recently found a pretty easy though not-so-green way out, bought some not-so-green kilowatt hours of coal and nuclear generated electric power and re-sold it under their green label. Well well.

And what do we learn from this…? First of all: there is also some Black Sheep among the Greens – but that we already knew at least since that ‘clever’ Swedish man not only collected money to preserve forests in South America, but then also cut down and sold some hundrets of thousands of trees – and finally was sentenced to pay a 177 Millionen Dollar fine (see also -> german newspaper Tagesspiegel)…

…well – I’ll anyways stick with the ‘clean~’ and/or ‘green power’ company called Naturstrom AG – they re-invest some of the money for new ‘clean~’ and/or ‘green’ power plants – so that also in the future we will hopefulle not need to use nuclear power – especially not secretly!

…powerful greetings, -t..-

Power Lies (and truths (and rumors)) (I)

Sorry, but I just can’t leave the recent public discussion about Nuclear Energy (or maybe Nuclear Power would suit better) uncommented. So here comes my first comment/lament about what I’d like to call ‘Power Lies (and truths (and rumors))’.

First of all, for those who don’t know: I grew up in a rural area in the North of Germany, known for its almost untouched nature, its friendly farmers – and a number of facilities for handling radioactive waste. The whole project is under construction since the 70ies (ongoing), but the first containers named ‘CASTOR’ are already delivered since the mid-90ies.
As long as I can think (literally) I just know that Nucluear Power is not only dangerous, but also simply the wrong way to go.

That said I’ll now come to the first (and actually my favourite) ‘Power Lie’: the Carbon Dioxide Reduction Lie:
Yes, it is true that nuclear power plants can help to reduce the production of carbon dioxide – locally. Once a nuclear power plant is all built and then fed with fuel rods (those nasty parts that radiate very actively and that get so hot that you can boil water with ‘em – which makes a nuclear power plant what it is) a it will basically only emit hot water – and therefore it does not emit carbon dioxide directly.
But until a nuclear power plant is actually built and fed with fuel rods a lot of carbon dioxide is emitted – mostly in the countries where the fuel rods are produced. To compare the actual numbers a so called ‘Life Cycle Analysis’ helps to figure out, what the actual CO2-footprint of a technology is. The exact numbers seem to vary very much though – depending on what is actually compared – and also depending on who actually paid the research.
So.. – ..maybe next time you hear someone saying something like “Nuclear Energy helps reducing carbon dioxide emissions” you can add a little “locally!“.

please feel free to browse on:
-> Greenpeace’s campain page ‘End the nuclear age’ (www.greenpeace.org)
-> Elena’s Motorcyle Ride through Chernobyl (www.kiddofspeed.com)