Or worse. Sometimes they burn food.
Building on the wind farm's success, the farming cooperative has diversified its business. In the face of falling crop prices and rising energy costs, they decided to build a biogas plant. That facility now turns maize and cereal silage - plus a mixture of pig and cow manure - into methane, which in turn heats and powers Feldheim's homes.
https://www.dw.com/en/feldheim-germanys-renewable-village/a-18466800 Feldheim's non-reliance on fossil fuels is largely an accounting trick. The energy their wind turbines put into the grid is considered equivalent to that they take out of it, which is not the case. Projects like this may reduce fossil fuel use to some extent but not enough to save the world.
But that's not why I call out these sorts of hopium.
( Hopium -- the metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope. )
For all such projects I ask what's the environmental footprint per person? What's the capital cost per person? Than I multiply that by 8 billion.
People who are wealthy generally have huge environmental footprints. Some of them feel guilty about it and do all sorts of strange things, often with government subsidy, to assuage their guilty feelings, while failing to reduce their environmental footprint in any significant way.
The answer to our environmental crisis can't be found in buying more stuff, especially if it's stuff made with copper, lithium, and rare earth magnets.
Sadly, the earth can't support a Tesla car, a PowerWall, Wind Turbines, and Solar Panels for every human. There's too many of us.
The answer isn't electric cars, the answer is fewer cars overall. Etc..
It's clear that the political and economic empowerment of women and rising standards of living reduce birth rates. How do we accomplish that?
A reliable electric supply and a safe water supply with indoor plumbing are a large part of that equation. These systems can be made from abundant materials -- steel, aluminum, concrete, and plastic -- materials abundant enough to raise living standards everywhere, for every human on earth.
Solar and wind power are not going to magically replace fossil fuels. The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit fossil fuels. Feldheim hasn't done that and never will.
Germany sought to replace its coal and nuclear power plants with a hybrid gas-wind-solar system. They failed.
The fossil fuel industry knows that solar and wind power will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas. In the long run solar and wind power will do nothing to reduce the overall amount of greenhouse gasses dumped into the atmosphere.
These articles are greenwash, which is why you see articles like this everywhere, even in publications that enthusiastically promote fossil fuel industry propaganda.
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