How Schleswig-Holstein sold their reliable diesel ferry for a song, spent 3.3 million Euro for a new emissions-free solar ferry that doesn't work, & increased carbon emissions on top of it all

A lot is happening right now, and not just in Lebanon.

In good news, the right-populist Freedom Party in Austria has come out on top in yesterday’s elections, winning an incredible 29.2% of the vote. In not-so-good news (but as I predicted), the state constitutional court in Thüringen ruled in favour of the CDU last Friday. The other parties were able to change the procedural rules in the Thuringian parliament and exclude the AfD not only from the office of president, but also from the entire executive committee of the Landtag. The “democratic” parties have also altered procedural rules to reduce AfD representation on parliamentary committees, effectively preventing the strongest party in the Landtag from exercising their blocking minority there.

But, I have just returned from the last of my autumn travels, and I need a few days to collect my thoughts before I write about any of that. I propose to ease into the blogging week instead with a small farcical fable about e-mobility and the wondrous solar-powered future that awaits us.

For this tale we must go to Schleswig-Holstein – that northern land of bays, fjords, cliffs, islands, and stiff breezes, just south of the Danish border. Specifically, we must travel to Missunde, a small town on the Schwansen peninsula. Missunde is right next to another town called Brodersby, on the opposing Angeln peninsula. Between Brodersby on the one hand, and Missunde on the other hand, is the Schlei, which you might mistake for a river but which is actually an inlet of the Baltic Sea.

To travel from Missunde to Brodersby, or from Brodersby to Missunde, you need to take an automobile ferry. Since 2003, the Missunde II has been this ferry. She is a cheerful, diesel-driven craft. Every year, she brings around 120,000 automobiles and 50,000 bicycles safely and reliably across the waters of the inlet.

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:

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.

Strangely, however, all was not well at our ferry crossing. It turns out that the Missunde III’s glorious solar roof acted like a great sail in the face of those stiff northern winds. Her small electric motors had trouble overcoming the force, such that she took twice as long to cross the Schlei against the wind as her drab and dirty older sister. The Missunde III’s greater weight also placed too much strain on her guidance cables, and she had trouble mooring at the dock. Cables can be changed out, but the mooring problems were far graver. The chubby Missunde III would require additional dolphins to be driven into the Schlei. Alas, ramming sticks into the bed of a fjord that also happens to be in the centre of a nature preserve is not exactly environmentally friendly; you have to do soil assessments, you have to apply for permits, it is not certain you’ll be granted those permits, and all of that anyway takes a long time.

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 approaching 30 kilometres to the nearest bridge. 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.

In March, after months of no ferry and pointless 30km detours, the mayor of Brodersby-Goltoft, Joschka Buhmann, had had enough. He demanded that authorities recommission the outmoded Missunde II and resume ferry service. The Office for Coastal Protection objected that they had already sold the Missunde II, and also that making her seaworthy again would require renovations of 1.8 million Euros.

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.