Manufactured landscapes
When you switch on a device in your house, do you ever think about where the electricity comes from? Maybe you have solar panels on your roof, but even then – there is no sun at night and not enough in winter. Then, it has to come from a power station, a turbine at the bottom of a dam or a wind turbine. None of which you really would like to see close to your backyard.
Overview of the Garzweiler mine
Two of the big excavators
In Germany 515.56 Twh of electricity were produced in 2019. Of these, 53.9% were from renewable sources, wind (24.6%) , solar (9%), biomass (8.6%) and hydroelectric (3,8%). 9.6% were produced from hard coal fired power plants, 19.7% use brown coal. The brown coal (lignite) is found in Germany itself. It sits in layers rather close to the ground and can be dug out from open pit mines. These mines are in the Rhenish district of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Lusatian district in Brandenburg and Saxony and the Central German district in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
In this part of the mine renaturing has started
Germany has been the world’s largest lignite producer since the beginning of industrial lignite mining. It still is. When burned, it is more CO2 intensive than hard coal.
In the background the power stations where the coal is turned into electricity
The Rhenish district has three mines, Garzweiler, Hambach and Inden. In the biggest, the Garzweiler mine, layers of coal of 40 m thick are found underground in a depth of 40 to 210 m. To get to it, the surface and intermediate layers of ground have to be removed. The ratio of coal to ground is 1:4.7, so for each ton of coal almost 5 tons of ground have to be removed. After the coal layers are depleted, the ground which had been removed is replaced and the area renatured. RWE, the company which wins the coal in the Rhenish district, wins 40 million tons of coal in the Garzweiler district alone. Altogether there is a supply of 1.3 billion tons in this mine. The areas of the two parts of the Garzweiler mine are 66 and 48 km2. Just a reminder if you slept during the chemistry lessen: 40 million tons of coal is at least 147 million tons of carbon dioxide.
the former main street of an abandoned villaage
land ready for the excavator
As the coal layers are depleted, the mine moves on. North Rhine Westphalia, where the mines are, is the most populated german state. To date, opencast lignite mining has altered 179,490 hectares of countryside in Germany. Since 1924, 313 settlements have been lost to lignite. Besides the settlements, all the infrastructure has to be constantly moved. I drove across the Garzweiler district on a motorway, which was not on my printed map of 2010. The old motorway had disappeared. Farmers loose there lands and have to be compensated by land in areas, where others already use all the farmland. A bucolic landscape of little villages and farms, old churches and little castles has disappeared. Still now, l discover dead end roads which have led to villages which were pulled down because they are in the way of the expanding mine. The land is prepared for the change. Farming has stopped and waist high weeds cover the fields between streets still lined with street lamps. An old shepherd can use the wasteland for his sheep. I cannot talk to him. He is from Romania.
The Romanian shepherd uses the abadoned fields for his sheep until the excavator comes
The coal is used in electrical power plants just outside the mining area. The energy the power plants produce is used right away by the huge excavators in the mines. The Garzweiler mine uses 7 excavators. The biggest is 100 meters high and can dig up 240.000 m3 of coal or landfill a day. In the big mine it looks like a toy. Conveyer belts bring coal and landfill to their destinations.
Excavators and the conveyer belt to transport the material
Last year the german government has decided on what they call “Kohleausstieg”. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions, all the coal fired power plants will be shut down. The open pit mines will be closed until 2038. The area will be renatured. This will lead to an enormous lake, which will fill up with water from the Rhine by 2080.
Mayor Zilikens of the town of Jüchen. A big part of the mine is on the territorry of his town
By chance I meet the mayor of the town of Jüchen, Harald Zilikens. A third of the area of his town is part of the Garzweiler open pit mine. 20.000 people depend on employment in the mines directly or indirectly. To generate the same amount of electricity as by the coal fired power plants hundreds of windmills have to be installed. The population accepts the mines as a kind of necessary evil which creates jobs. They do not accept the windmills.
Access is strictly forbidden. The area is controlled by CCTV camera
I stay in a hotel in the little town of Hambach. Hambach has given its name to another enormous open pit mine and to a forest. Even so the government already was announcing the end of coal powered electricity generation, RWE wanted to cut down the Hambach forest to enlarge the mine. There were violent protests. The protests were successful. Eventually RWE has given up on their plans. The old landfill was used to create a hill years ago. It now is covered with a new forest, there are hiking trails and lookout towers. At the moment you look out over the still operating Hambach mine. In 2080, you will look out over the new lake.
Water is sprayed to avoid dust blowing into the surrounding towns
The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky had spend a lifetime to document how human kind changes the surface of the earth. His movie “manufactured landscape” is a milestone in this documentation. On his website there also is a collection of photos of open pit mines:
