Greens Angered By Subsidized Photovoltaic System Installed On Energy-Guzzling Indoor Skiing Facility

The climate-catastrophe-obsessed Klimaretter brings us an amusing anecdote which illustrates the absurdity of the green economy. It shows that it’s not really green at all. It’s pure bullshit, and Germans couldn’t care less about scaling back their lifestyles.

Snowfunpark_Wittenburg

The 330-meter long indoor skiing facility in Wittenburg, Germany, gets €1 million in subsidies to install a PV system. (Photo: Schiwago/Wikimedia Commons)

It’s an 8-million euro photovoltaic system that’s as big as 6 football pitches and produces enough power to supply 1700 homes. It’s been subsidized by the Mecklenburg state government to the tune of one million euros. But this particular solar facility is not installed on the roof of a barn or of a green technology production company, rather it was mounted on the roof of an energy-guzzling indoor skiing facility – with the help of government subsidies.

The large photovoltaic system on the indoor skiing facility in Wittenburg, will go into operation in just a few days, and the greens are hardly amused because the “energy-wasting” indoor skiing facility received 1 million euros in subsidies from taxpayers to have it installed. Worse, the indoor skiing facility will end up consuming three times more power than what the photovoltaic system on its roof could ever provide.


Wittenburg, Germany. (Photo: Schiwago/Wikimedia Commons)

While local politicians are patting themselves on the back for greening up the facility, the opposition greens are claiming it amounts to a subsidy for an energy-gobbling, environmentally-unfriendly project, and not the photovoltaic system itself.

Klimaretter writes:

In reality it gobbles enormous amounts of power – together with the adjacent hotel, three times more than what the photovoltaic facility on the roof itself produces. That’s not how environmental protection is supposed to appear.”

But this is precisely how the green movement does appear, and operate. Making token green gestures is all that’s needed to have one’s environmental sins forgiven.

For example, two weeks ago Arnold Schwarzenegger flew all the way from California to Austria in his private jet just to give a speech on the importance of protecting the climate. He also said he fills up his big SUV with bio-fuel. That’s real environmental responsibility, Schwarzenegger claimed.

Another example: every year thousands of delegates and environmental planet-rescuers fly to some swanky resort city for the annual planet-saving, 2-week long climate conferences. All the carbon emissions get offset by planting trees somewhere of course! Al Gore is making hundreds of millions. That’s how environmental protection appears nowadays. The whole thing is a farce and a scam.

The indoor ski slope and hotel facilities in the state of Mecklenburg are said to provide the area with 150 badly needed jobs.

While the greens see this photovoltaic project as an environmental effrontery, the indoor skiing-facility operators view it differently: Not only does the photovoltaic system help make the skiing facility more competitive, it also means less people will have to burn fuel to travel all the way down to the Alps to go skiing. Good point!

But klimaretter is not convinced:

The indoor skiing facility belongs to the Van-der-Valk Group, which makes money with hotel and vacation-apartment rentals. Just as a windpark was being planned in the area of Rostock, the corporate group lobbied against it – in the end the criteria for wind energy in the area were redefined and the area was deemed as being unsuitable. Here, up to 30 times more green energy could have been produced by wind than with the photovoltaic facility in Wittenburg.”

To me it looks like a good place to take the family on a hot summer day.

 

11 responses to “Greens Angered By Subsidized Photovoltaic System Installed On Energy-Guzzling Indoor Skiing Facility”

  1. Jean-M.

    The interesting relationships of German journalists:
    http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/38/38515/1.html

    1. DirkH

      Even German academia has realized that top German journalists and publishers are members of Bilderberg… ROTFLMAO. Someone must have shown them Google.

  2. DirkH

    “Here, up to 30 times more green energy could have been produced by wind than with the photovoltaic facility in Wittenburg.”

    I think the evil capitalists from Van der Valk might have saved a few storks, cranes and eagles from being killed by glas fibre wings. True conservationism; something that the Greens have no interest in.

    BTW the East German grid is overloaded with wind energy already anyway. (during the times where the wind actually blows, of course.)

  3. Bernd Felsche

    The 4800 people of Wittenburg don’t have to go to the Alps for skiing.

    3 hours by car (7 hours by public “transport”) and they’d be in the Harz mountains.

    There isn’t usually enough snow for skiing in summer; which I suspect is when the facility expects to get most of its business.

    Ironic that the linked Wonkypedia page mentions frost damage to the foundations of the white elephant. Operators are reported to have gone broke and “the bank” appears to own the place. The place has eaten subsidies from its misconception.

    Still a long way off the disaster that was NüroDisney (more at How come the Ring is in trouble? Is it serious?) in which more than 500 million Euros in public moneys have created a wasteland through malinvestment and, as is inevitable when people blow bubbles, has caused local business (whole towns) to do it tougher than would have been the case without the “investment”.

    If anybody asks where all the money went from (West) Germany’s economic miracle, it’s instructive to take them through the center of Berlin on a river cruise; to count the grandiose government edifices which have sprouted in less than 20 years. And the huge riverside apartment building that is effectively on rent to Merkel (her support staff, security, etc. etc.) because she doesn’t like living in the 200 m² of leaky residence of the Washing Machine.

    It looks like there ample competition in Germany to burn public money; “renewable” or otherwise.

    1. DirkH

      There is this mad theory of the, whatsitcalled, fiscal multiplier
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_multiplier

      which serves as justification for arbitrary projects.
      One could also say the amount of mad projects is a function of the price of money.
      As money is getting cheaper and cheaper in Germany the waste rises , like it did in Spain pre 2008.

      This means that debt is generated and accumulated until the diminishing returns of ever more unprofitable projects cannot serve the debt anymore; leading to loans blowing up, a bursting of a bubble.

      The bubbles in Spain and Greece have popped; the bubble in Germany is maximally expanded now.

      Bubbles burst even in a near to zero interest rate environment. The price of energy is the immovable object that politicians can’t do anything about. (No I don’t mean intermittent wind and solar electricity. I mean dependable energy)

  4. Paul

    Looking at the angle of the two sides of the roof it would be interesting to find out exactly how the sun passes over the panels. If the line of the building is going north/south things there would, presumably, maximum exposure for the panels. If not then things might be even worse in terms of capturing sunlight.

    1. Bernd Felsche

      The roof is a large area. I suspect that the slope of the roof doesn’t help because the orientation is far from ideal (OpenStreetmap and Google satellite ) and it doesn’t look all that promising in terms of the visible installation (Panoramio). Please tell me that I’m wrong and that those are only skylights on the roof.

      1. Bernd Felsche

        I’ve just visited the web site of the operator… they show a brilliant-white roof similar to that in the satellite photo. So those are PV panels on the roof. Apparently fixed directly to the roof via rails. I doubt that the output of the installation is over 50% of its PV-panel rated output even under peak insolation. 25% is more likely. At 53⁰ N, the slope of the roof is too shallow; even if it were directly pointed South; and it’s very far from that ideal, “pointing” approximately to the South-West.

        The PV panels have no chance of “recovering” the energy that went into their production.

        Was the installation at the center done by environmental psychologists?

        Perhaps structural engineers judged the roof too weak to carry the load of a productive PV installation with panels at optimum orientation. Especially with a trapped snow load.

        I suspect that the year-round yield from the multi-million Euro installation would be on par with what Pierre “generates” with his humble PV means: Nothing like 1700 homes’ worth, even around solar noon in mid-summer, under clear skies.

  5. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup | Watts Up With That?

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