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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