Original reporting by eugyppius
Ladies and gentlemen, grab your popcorn because the green energy saga out of Schleswig-Holstein has everything: incompetence, mindless virtue-signaling, and an eco-friendly ferry that apparently doubles as a wind sail. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well.
Here’s the tragicomedy: Once upon a time in the quiet German countryside, there was a diesel-powered ferry, the Missunde II. For two decades, this workhorse reliably transported over 120,000 automobiles and 50,000 bicycles annually across the Schlei inlet—a body of water barely 100 meters wide. Not exactly the English Channel. But alas, the Missunde II had a fatal flaw in the eyes of the virtue-signaling bureaucrats: it was powered by diesel. And we all know that diesel is the villain in our modern-day environmental morality play.
There was nothing wrong with the Missunde II, except that she ran on diesel, which as we know is an evil fuel destined to destroy the world; and that her diesel engines made noise, as diesel engines do. Thus the bureaucrats of the State Office for Coastal Protection decided some years ago to replace the old and reliable Missunde II with a newer, silent and much more environmentally friendly solar-powered ferry, to be named Missunde III. Their decision was entirely typical. The Office for Coastal Protection is subordinate to the Environmental Ministry of Schleswig-Holstein, and the Environmental Ministry is in the hands of an extremely bald man named Tobias Goldschmidt, who likes to talk about how he will make Schleswig-Holstein carbon-neutral – one ferry at a time.
The carbon-neutral Missunde III cost 3.3 million Euro, and she was finally delivered after various delays in January 2024. Unlike her filthy, noisy predecessor, the Missunde III has a glorious roof, to carry her precious solar panels aloft:
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/how-schleswig-holstein-sold-their
Enter the Green Bureaucrats
The geniuses at Schleswig-Holstein’s Office for Coastal Protection—subordinate to the grand Environmental Ministry—decided to replace the “dirty” diesel ferry with a solar-powered marvel of modern eco-engineering, the Missunde III. After all, who could resist a shiny new boat with solar panels on its roof, especially when it promises to save the planet, one ferry ride at a time? The cost? A mere 3.3 million euros. No big deal when you’re spending other people’s money.
The Missunde III, according to the planners, was going to usher in a new era of clean transportation across the inlet. No more diesel fumes or engine noise polluting the idyllic coastal landscape. Just the gentle hum of solar-powered motors quietly ferrying cars and bikes from one side to the other.
Or so they thought.
Reality Strikes: Solar Panels Don’t Like Wind
Reality has a funny way of upending even the best-laid plans, especially when those plans are designed more for PR than practicality. Turns out, the solar panels on the Missunde III were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. The ferry’s fancy solar roof acted like a giant sail in the face of Schleswig-Holstein’s famously stiff coastal winds. Instead of gliding effortlessly across the Schlei, the Missunde III struggled. Its motors couldn’t handle the drag from the wind, and it took twice as long to make the crossing compared to its diesel-powered predecessor. Not only that, but the increased weight of the solar ferry put too much strain on its guidance cables, and it couldn’t even dock properly. It turns out when you let ideology steer your projects, you often end up in a ditch—or in this case, adrift in a river.
Thus the sun-powered Missunde III languished in harbour while people argued about how much environmental harm they should be allowed to inflict on the inlet to make her steerable. All the while, the automobiles that normally would’ve ridden the ferry across the Schlei had to take lengthy detours to the nearest bridge 30 kilometres away. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, and sometimes you have to increase carbon emissions while you wait for somebody to make your emissions-free ferry work.
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/how-schleswig-holstein-sold-their
Environmentalists Stuck in an Environmental Jam
Now, here’s the part where the absurdity really ramps up. In order to fix the Missunde III’s docking problems, authorities decided they needed to drive extra dolphins (marine piling structures, not the mammals) into the bed of the Schlei. But the Schlei is a protected nature preserve, which meant that installing the dolphins required soil assessments and permits, and all that bureaucratic rigamarole takes time. So instead of reducing carbon emissions, the environmentalist brain trust behind the Missunde III managed to increase them, as cars were forced to take a 30-kilometer detour while the ferry languished in the harbor, out of service.
The Return of the Outlaw Diesel
After months of costly detours, exasperated local officials demanded that the old, faithful Missunde II be brought back into service. But there was a hitch: The ferry had already been sold for the grand sum of 17,000 euros—a pittance for a vessel that had reliably served the community for decades. And wouldn’t you know it, making the Missunde II seaworthy again would require extensive renovations costing 1.8 million euros.
Authorities quietly sold the outmoded and embarrassing Missunde II for 17,000 Euro to some dim person who failed to grasp that diesel ferries are not the way of the future. The buyer perhaps regretted his purchase, because he left the poor boat moored in Maasholm, near the head of the Schlei, where she began to decay in the elements. Such is the necessary if cruel fate of technologically unadvanced and environmentally unfriendly watercraft.
But wait, it gets better. After realizing their solar-powered dream boat was a lemon, the same environmental bureaucrats who sold the Missunde II in the first place came crawling back to the buyer and bought it back for 100,000 euros—almost six times what they sold it for. Let that sink in. In the name of environmentalism, they wasted millions on a solar-powered ferry that doesn’t work, then had to spend a fortune to get the reliable old diesel ferry back into service.
Lessons Not Learned
As of September 2024, the Missunde III still isn’t operational. Engineers are trying to outfit it with additional bow thrusters to help it cope with the winds, but it’s anyone’s guess if or when it will ever see regular service. Meanwhile, the old Missunde II is back on the water, ferrying cars and bikes across the Schlei just like it did before this farcical green energy experiment began.
The Missunde II has been given a new permit to sail until 2028, because nobody believes that the hyper-advanced super-silent Missunde III will be up to the simple task of ferrying automobiles across 100 metres of water anytime soon.
And what has Schleswig-Holstein gained for its 3.3 million euros (plus another hundred thousand, plus almost 2 million for repair, to buy back the diesel ferry)? A nice rooftop of solar panels that would be better suited to a garden shed, a wind-sail masquerading as a ferry, and a reminder that virtue-signaling environmentalism often leads to nothing but wasted money and time.
The Moral of the Story
This fiasco is a perfect example of what happens when ideology trumps common sense. The green energy fanatics in government are so blinded by their obsession with cutting carbon emissions that they can’t see the forest for the trees—or in this case, the ferry for the sail. It’s not about actually solving problems or making things work better; it’s about feeling good about themselves and showing off their “green” credentials to the world, no matter how many millions of euros they flush down the toilet in the process.
Now it is September, and Missunde III is no closer to ferrying automobiles across the Schlei than she was in March. Among other things, engineers have decided she’ll have to be outfitted with additional bow thrusters to deal with the stiff currents. Thus the Office for Coastal Protection finally went limping back to the not-so-dim buyer who purchased the Missunde II for 17,000 Euros, and struck a deal to buy it back from him for 100,000 Euros. The Missunde II has been given a new permit to sail until 2028, because nobody believes that the hyper-advanced super-silent Missunde III will be up to the simple task of ferrying automobiles across 100 metres of water anytime soon.
The Missunde III debacle should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks the Green New Deal or Net Zero policies will usher in some kind of environmental utopia. More often than not, these projects are little more than expensive virtue-signaling exercises that do more harm than good. If this is the future of green energy, then God help us all.
HT/Fabius Maximus
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More like a post in The Babylon Bee. Or if someone revived the old National Lampoon.
Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to sound plausible.
Unfortunately, they learned the hard way and “when will they ever learn?”
They didn’t learn a damned thing; they are a government bureaucracy immune from economic realities and citizen review.
Another demonstration that governments cannot run a business.
Some cynics would say that they spent 4.1million euros to achieve nothing or less than nothing considering the extra vehicle emissions and time wasted.
But those ignorant fools don’t recognize that there were 4.1 million euros of good-paying Green
graftjobs created!All for just one little ferry that a sane government in a land of engineers would have replaced with a bridge.
Just think of the Green
graftjobs that can be created with a TRILLION euros!That’s what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are delivering for America today with the Inflation Creation Act. Can you believe that Donald Trump wants to eliminate all that progress?
Oh, now, don’t sugar coat it. Tells us how you really feel.
Bureaucracies don’t learn, they imitate.
They do not innovate, they replicate.
Jesuits have a notion called “invincible ignorance”.
And the stupid NSW Government in Australia plan to replace with electrically powered versions the reliable diesel powered Manly ferries that cross Sydney Harbour near the Heads exposed to full ocean waves. Obviously none of the decision makers have crossed the harbour when the weather is bad. Also I don’t know how their batteries may be able to deal with salt water which inevitably will blow into the ferry under these conditions.
They should build just one, and trial it for 5 or so years while keeping the wonderful reliable diesel fleet going.
Replacing them all at once would be shear STUPIDITY.. so almost certainly what they will try to do. 😉
And of course scrap the diesel ones so that there’s no turning back…
This is also what the Germans are doing with their nuclear plants. They wasted no time to blow up the cooling towers.
And what the UK did with its coal burners.
True but those were easily changed
That would be madness bnice! First of all, why do you hate Green jobs? How much is Big Oil paying you?
If they don’t replace all the ferries at once, people would be able to compare the performance of the new slow unreliable ones against the old reliable ones. When they’re all equally bad, it’s much easier to gaslight people that they are 37.842% better than the old planet-trashing ones. It’s just The Science ™ !
Many years ago when my life was in the Australian navy the frigate I was serving in could not exit Sydney Harbour Heads as the waves/wind were too high/strong.
Frigates (similar to destroyers but slightly smaller) are built for rough weather but could not fight Nature that day
Manly ferries are required to pass close by the Heads. Good luck with electric ferries under those conditions
It feels like the world is going backwards. Remember the golden era of innovation, invention, improvement, practicality. It started in the early 20th century and ended sometime around the late 20th century. What changed in the meantime? The west was blessed with easy life, plentiful food (albeit poor nutrition which has lead to obesity and sloth) where people needed a new, innovative pursuit, such as “saving the planet”, diversity, equity, inclusion, racial equality no matter how much they drank. It is a sad state of the world, when things like this happen with taxpayer hard-earned money. God help us.
1984 has turned into 2024…
Wealth, but more specifically, do-gooders to redistribute it to those who were too lazy to generate their own, or who the bureaucrats could funnel it to in order to expand their fiefdoms.
And they ALL take a skim off the top !!!
I read somewhere that some US government(s), possibly federal and state together, spent $1T dollars to distribute $200B in welfare benefits. I have no link and wouldn’t know how to begin googling for such figures, but it was before 2010.
Taxes are about the most inefficient way possible to redistribute money to the poor, which is probably why the bureaucrats like them so much.
I think you just described the Anthropocene, 1901-1999. The shortest epoch in geological history.
Typical shoot – ready – aim from the alarmists and environmentalists. Nothing new here.
Web has images of Missunde III.
My first thought was of a 1950s era drive-up food place
with servers on roller skates.
Male+skater+sonic.jpg (383×340) (bp.blogspot.com)
Just wondering how much CO2 was released in the construction of that folly.
Payback time, in decade or centuries.? 😉
They clearly don’t have a clue, perhaps they should have named the ferry “Missunderstood”
Prefered Missunderstood:
https://youtu.be/3x4Wdj_q6xw
Bureaucrats and administrators, the worst part of crappy government. They truly are the problem. Get rid of all those unaccountable agencies and the grand majority of our problems disappear. They are bad.
Government is nothing but bureaucrats. You can no more eliminate bureaucrats from government than carbon from CO2, or life itself.
I don’t totally agree with you, elected politicians need to run for office to continue in office, bureaucrats and administrators don’t.
Thanks, Charles!
Just another libtard fairy tale, deserving nothing but our laughter and ridicule! The Green Weenies have listened to so many scawwwy “climate campfire stories” that they are capable of little more than cowering under their cots, waiting for the sun to come up! Their stories have much in common with the Brothers Grimm, only their endings are much bloodier and more depressing! ROTFLMAO!
This article is a prime example of egregiously stupid writing wherein every part, more or less, is repeated multiple time, making reading it an obnoxious process. Does this come from someone hooked on songs like “100 bottles of beer on the wall” or someone who gets paid by the word and has no editor working for the good of the readers?
Perhaps the writing isn’t up to Ivy League level – but the style isn’t what’s important- it’s the story that counts.
Interesting. I vary styles. When I go for heavy sardonic it may get too repetitive. I’ll try and do better.
Charles, you did fine. When you have zealots like AndyHce who are so deep into the kool-aid, it takes some repetition to get points across.
You mean like all the propaganda we are currently suffering regarding climate change? Over and over and over, every story has to include a reference to how every bad thing that happens in the world is caused by, or made worse by, man made climate change.
It was written as a story. That is the format. The repetition is only apparent when the quotes are followed by the story summarizing the quotes.
Lighten up Frances.
You were offended not by what transpired, but by the writing style?
Lighten up Frances.
Check out Wikipedia for the fiasco of the Scottish ferries. Ordered in 2015 they still aren’t in service and costs have quadrupled to over £400 million. The Scottish Nationalist government wanted duel fuel (diesel and LNG) ships to make them greener. In the meantime 50000 islanders and God knows how many tourists who entirely rely on a reliable ferry service have suffered immensely. Oh and the design specs stipulated a 1000 passenger capacity but thats had to be reduced to 850.
Solar powered? So if they ever do get the thing into service I presume it only operates between 10am and 2pm during summer – if it’s sunny.
Did the engineers who designed this ferry really think this had any chance of working?
No doubt they were given a requirements document. If true, they had to meet the requirements even if impractical to the point of sheer stupidity.
I am not allowed to drive the train.
The whistle I can’t blow.
I am not allowed to say how fast
The railroad cars will go.
I am not allowed to blow off steam
Or even clang the bell.
But let the damned thing jump the tracks
And see who catches hell.
They gave it the wrong name: Instead of Missunde it should have been “Mist Stunde”
which means “crap hour” in English.
Best laugh I’ve had in a long time!
And all this timed perfectly to coincide with the building world-wide realisation that CO2 is not after all causing warming. Nice one.
Solution: make bureaucrats personally and financially accountable for the decisions they make.
It will happen again, once there are a series of failures in the provision of green energy, requiring conventional generation to make good the damage.
Couldn’t they just get a 100m cable and plug it into the mains?
I’m fairly sure your local DIY store will sell you one for considerably less than the €2m it cost to get the diesel boat back into service.
Just install a lot of giant oats sticking out of each side. Worked for the Vikings.
“Everybody Pulls His Weight…”
Oars?
Carbomania.
Great, a solar powered white elephant.
Bad engineering is bad engineering, regardless of the “green”. In Norway we are happily replacing diesel ferries with electric ones, and they cross fjords of several kilometers width, including some coastal strecthes of 10’s of kilometers. But they run on batteries, charged from shore. Due to regulations they need to have diesel gensets onboard, and use those for situations where the charging was incomplete or missing and for transits in case of maintenance.
Point is, they work. And they are much bigger than the cable-raft in Germany. Granted, on average they use the diesel 20-30% of the time but that leaves 70-80% reduced emissions. We charge them on hydropower.
Pat yourself on the back then.
Every problem has a pragmatic solution.
Usually engineering designs are based on trade studies to get the most for the least.
Engineering fails when bureaucrats dictate the end result.
Obviously your engineers were allowed to engineer the solution.
The Ferry in the article runs on cables … FKN CABLES.
Put the engine(s) on the shore(s). Then power the damn thing any which way that gets them the most excited … wind, solar, bicyclists waiting for the ferry can set up on a treadmill for a 1% discount for every hour pedaled, along with a battery … or direct diesel, or remnant cooking oil, or gas, or kerosene, or steam (powered by anything burnable) or any combination of of the above. Any (or all of it) should have been cheaper than 3.3 million.
(I just responded to you because mentioned that engineers would do a better job)
These are the kind of folks who thought it was a good idea to invade Russia TWICE within 25 years.
The issues and problems with the new electric Wolfe Islander IV are in the same vein. It takes much longer to cross between Kingston and Wolfe Island, and even though it carries more vehicles, seems to add to crossing delays.
When on board all you hear are the diesels running, which is apparently the reason it runs slow, because the diesels are being used to generate power for the batteries. Apparently you can’t run the ferry at full power while you generate power for the batteries using the diesels. That was not the way it was supposed to operate, but as the charging infrastructure on the Kingston side is apparently not working (not complete), what else can they do?
And it is not even winter.
Everyone has a great plan, up until the moment when reality punches them in the face. (paraphrase of a great boxing saying)
Dummkopf, Dummkopf, Dummkopf, Dummkopf
I think it was the second German word I learned as a child. Verboten probably first.